


Enemy of My Enemy: Vanquished

by KingSteve



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-28 20:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6344143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingSteve/pseuds/KingSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the players are assembled, the game has begun; but when the last move has been made, who will be the victors, and who the vanquished?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

** **

 

**Chapter One**

_**Kiev, Ukraine, November 2008** _

_**Tuesday 0100 Local Time [Monday 1500 PST]** _

Considering that it was the dead of night, Boryspil Airport was a relative hive of activity; over a dozen planes waited on the tarmac. At Terminal B, where all international cargo flights arrived and departed, one particular cargo freighter sat away from the others, dwarfing most other aircraft in the vicinity, its cargo door open and loading ramp deployed. Four men waited outside the oversized plane, keeping between it and the rest of the airport; three of them together chatting while the fourth one stood separate from the others, rigid with his hands behind his back, observing everything. In the distance were a lot of excavators, cranes and other construction vehicles that in a few hours would continue work on building a new terminal to expand the airport.

It was the last individual – a T-888 – who was in charge of the others. Tall, appearing to be in his forties, with long blond hair swept back. He stood sentinel in front of the plane to make sure nobody got too close. A pair of customs officials walked closer and he zeroed in on them as they approached.

"American?" the younger of the two asked in heavily-accented English.

"Yes," he responded flatly. "Our flight number is AA-899. Cargo docket number: 0038472."

The older of the customs officers looked down at his clipboard, scanning for the matching code on his printout. His eyes widened as he found it, along with special instructions not to search this plane or to accost any personnel associated with it and to provide whatever assistance they asked for, without question.

He stared for a moment at the apparent senior of the four men, trying not to look nervous as he spoke to the man, who just seemed… _off._ He didn't know what it was exactly, but the blond man gave off nothing; no sign of impatience, he didn't even seem cold, when the other three men with him shivered and rubbed their hands to keep them warm. He glanced down again at the special instructions, the way this man looked, and drew his own conclusion. There were no names on the sheet for any of the men and he wasn't able to check their passports, so he came up with his own: _Mr Blond,_ an American government agent of some kind. CIA most likely, escorting something classified that the US was shipping to Ukraine – something that would likely piss off the Russians that neither party wanted to be made public. What that could be, he had no idea, but his instructions were clear: leave them alone and do not attempt to inspect the cargo.

"Do you require any assistance unloading?" he asked, trying to be helpful.

"We require forklifts," Mr Blond answered.

"I will see to them. If you need anyone to operate them–"

"We will," the terminator replied. "Our transport hasn't arrived yet; do you have any temporary storage space?"

The Customs official spoke into the radio attached to his jacket pocket and issued instructions in Ukrainian. Unknown to him, the T-888 he'd privately named 'Mr Blond' understood every word he said, though he didn't let on. He listened to both the official and the voice on the other end. If the man or his colleague over the radio mentioned anything about searching the cargo or speculated on it he would take action to ensure they never found out more. Luckily for both of them, the Customs officer displayed no suspicious behaviour.

He pointed to a large warehouse several hundred metres away. "We store and process all cargo arrivals there." As he spoke a forklift truck arrived. "We have a space available. Do you know how long you will need it for?"

"No," Mr Blond said. "Our transport should have been waiting for us. I'll have to arrange another collection." The officer gave him a sheet to sign, which he did, before the two humans left him and his team alone. The forklift truck rolled up the ramp and into the plane before reversing out carrying a large metal container.

The terminator turned to his human colleagues. "Don't let the cargo out of your sight. If anyone tries to open it, kill them."

"Got it," one of them said. He and the other two walked along behind the forklift towards the warehouse, where they would remain until the cargo was picked up. While the three humans disappeared, he pulled out a cell phone and dialled. Someone on the other end answered almost immediately.

_"Rick: what's up?"_

"Where is the truck?" he asked.

 _"It should be with you,"_ the voice replied, anxiety evident in the tone.

"It's not. Something must be wrong."

_"Leave it with me, Rick. I'll make sure a machine's driving next time. In the meantime I'll locate another driver and hire another truck. I'll call you back when we get an ETA."_

The phone went dead and Rick put it back in his pocket. The truck could not have disappeared. He had escorted four cargo flights from the US to Ukraine before and there had never been any issues until now. They had used the same driver every time; as far as humans went he was reliable and he'd never even been late before. His absence was a serious concern.

* * *

_**Serrano Point, California** _

_**Tuesday 1515 PST** _

" _Ukraine?"_

Sarah stared at Weaver, wondering if she could actually hear what she was saying. "You send my son up to Oregon to do your dirty work – nearly getting him killed in the process –and now I've finally gotten him back, you want us to just pack our bags and go halfway around the world?"

"You don't have any bags; you're wearing everything you own," Weaver replied. "But yes."

"Why don't _you_ do it?" Sarah asked her, hostility evident in her voice now. Neither John nor Cameron had elaborated yet on events in Oregon prior to their reunion; she'd have to prise it out of them, but John Connor being put in the crosshairs by a machine wouldn't happen on her watch. "We'll stay here and look after your precious John Henry, and you can show us how it's done." It was a computer, not a toddler; it didn't need babysitting.

Before Weaver could make any kind of retort, John intervened. "No, we'll go," he said.

"We will?" Sarah turned to John, confused at his compliance.

"Why not?" John said, shrugging. "If there's a Kaliba factory there then we've got to take it out; we might as well just go instead of staying here arguing."

"Excellent," Weaver said. John Connor seemed to be coming around to her way of thinking after all. It was so much easier to do business with humans when they realised she was right.

"But I'm taking Cameron, my mom, and the Three Amigos here." He gestured towards Thor, Freyr and Aegir.

"That's not our mission," Aegir said curtly. "We're here to kill T-Zero."

"He's right," Thor chipped in. "It's a bigger threat than Skynet."

"I still can't believe that," Sarah replied. She'd listened to their account of the future but she still had a hard time getting past their claim that the artificial intelligence that had plagued her and John for years, the same machine that had before and would again kill billions of people, had been replaced at the top of the food chain.

"T-Zero almost won the war for Skynet in our time. He's back here and at present he's vulnerable, with only three other cyborgs to support him. If he's allowed to achieve any kind of power in this time he will be unstoppable."

"But we don't know where he is or what he's doing," John said. "We've got a Skynet target; we should hit that while we have a chance and then focus on T-Zero."

"I need at least one of them to protect John Henry," Weaver argued.

"Once we're back," John continued without missing a beat, "you and John Henry will help them find this T-Zero, and we'll take it out. Deal?"

"Deal," Thor said, nodding. As Aegir had said: hunting Skynet wasn't why they'd been sent back but he wouldn't allow Cameron or Connor to risk their lives without his support. He also considered that John was still a target: with one of its cyborgs dead, it was likely T-Zero would send another, perhaps one of the T-900s. If it did then they would be there to protect both John and Cameron, and if it was a 900 that came after them then its CPU would provide vital intelligence. He'd heard a human saying once: _'Scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.'_ He found it very applicable in this situation.

"Thank you," John said, holding his hand out. Thor extended his own massive, meaty paw and shook on the deal.

"Is there anything else?" Weaver asked, a hint of irritation in her voice that John had recruited the Vanguards' help over her head. She wasn't used to people defying her, especially those who weren't disposable.

"Yeah," John said, knowing that with Thor on his side, his bargaining posture had just gone from highly dubious to pretty damn good. He had the advantage and now he was going to push it. "I don't want to live in a nuke plant forever. I want a house – somewhere away from people; enough money to live independently; a car, guns. While we're at it…" He turned his attention from Weaver to look at John Henry. "I want you to erase Mom, Cameron and me from all FBI and police databases: no trace of us left."

John Henry nodded. "I can do that," he said. "But there will still be paper records I can't erase."

"We'll worry about that later." John turned back to Weaver. "If we go to Ukraine, that's what I want: take it or leave it."

"Would you like the kitchen sink as well?" Weaver asked, a small smile on her face. John Connor had the upper hand and he knew it: he still had Cameron, had his mother back, and now the Vanguards were on his side. He'd tipped the balance of power in his favour; it was very well played. She knew she was correct in choosing to ally with him; perhaps in this time they would actually be able to defeat Skynet and prevent Judgment Day.

"Was that a _joke?"_ Sarah asked, looking at Weaver.

"Perhaps my understanding of humour leaves something to be desired," the redhead admitted. Humour was something completely, solely human that she had yet to grasp, but she sensed her attempt to add levity to the situation and diffuse the Connors' hostile bargaining had somewhat succeeded. "I'll remain with Mr Ellison to protect John Henry."

"John needs at least twenty-four hours rest," Cameron said. "I want to make sure he's one hundred percent."

"I could do with a day off," John admitted. He couldn't remember the last time he had been able to just relax, even for a few hours. _Probably Dejalo,_ he thought, though that hadn't exactly been the chilled-out weekend away he'd hoped for.

"It will take me time to organise transport and equipment," Weaver said to them. "Speaking of which…" She took a step towards John. "What happened to the Toyota I supplied you with?"

"Sorry," John said. "It got trashed."

"That's unfortunate."

"Yeah," John replied casually. It was just a truck.

"And the cabin?" she asked.

"Gone, too."

"I see. What about the weapons and supplies cache you buried?"

John shrugged. "I don't know. We didn't exactly have time to stop and check on it."

Weaver narrowed her eyes at John, perturbed at how blasé he was being. "I find your attitude disturbing, Mr Connor. My resources aren't infinite and these items aren't cheap."

"I find being nearly murdered by a liquid metal terminator to be more than a little _'disturbing'_ or _'unfortunate.'_ And now I have to stand here and listen to another one bitch about expenses… _Right!_ No: 'How are you, are you okay?' Just: 'What happened to my stuff?'"He turned away from her, shaking his head, not quite believing that he and Cameron had almost been killed, but Weaver was only concerned about the expensive toys she'd given them, as if they'd just gotten bored and thrown them away. "What were you in the future?" he asked. "Skynet's accountant?"

"You're alive," Weaver replied sternly, using the same tone she often did when speaking to Savannah. "You complain about the T-1001 that tried to kill you, but it failed. You're still here, and I'm looking ahead. I don't have time for banal niceties and useless sentiment: if you want a hug I suggest you look elsewhere." She looked pointedly at Cameron. _Humans:_ they so often dwelt on what had just happened, or in this case _nearly_ happened, that they couldn't move forward.

She decided to change the subject before John could make any kind of reply. "I have a safe house ten miles from here. Please take more care with it than you did the cabin." She turned to Ellison. "You can stay there, too," she added. "It'll be easier than a commute from Los Angeles."

Sarah frowned. "How do I know he won't turn us in?" she asked, walking up to the former agent. "How do we know it wasn't you who told the police about us before?"

Ellison opened his mouth to answer but before he could defend himself, John Henry cut in. "It was probably my brother who informed the police."

 _"Brother?_ How can a machine have a brother?" Sarah asked.

"They share a common code," Weaver said, "the work of Miles Dyson, albeit in different timelines. Please try to keep up."

 _"Bitch,"_ Sarah muttered. Suddenly Aegir didn't seem so bad after all, not compared to Weaver. She was sure that the liquid metal had super-sensitive hearing, like Cameron, and probably heard her, but she didn't care.

Nor did Catherine Weaver; she knew Sarah Connor could become a problem, and she would have to make sure that John kept his mother in line. Her attitude was becoming annoying. It would be easier to work without the constant human presence.

A cell phone rang and both John and Ellison checked their pockets. Both shrugged when they saw it wasn't coming from either of them.

Weaver pulled hers out and answered it. "Yes?" She listened as the voice on the other end spoke to her, waiting for it to finish before she made her reply. "Keep the engine running; I'll be there shortly." She hung up and saw that everyone assembled around her was looking at her expectantly. "ZeiraCorp was attacked early this morning," she told them. "A large group of armed men and machines stormed the building. Presumably looking for John Henry."

"What happened?" Thor asked.

"They're all dead. The security staff who arrived for their shift found bodies in the parking lot, foyer, and in the offices. They don't have access to the basement but I'd assume there are more down there."

"You didn't see any of it?" Sarah asked John Henry.

"No. I didn't know until now."

Sarah laughed humourlessly and stepped towards John Henry, her fists clenched. "I thought you were meant to be some kind of Anti-Skynet; what's the point if you can't see what's going on right under your nose?"

Aegir took a step towards her. "Careful, monkey."

She turned towards the Vanguard, glaring. "Call me that again, _metal,_ and–"

"You'll throw your dung at me?"

Weaver intervened before it went any further. "The security system is closed-circuit. No one outside ZeiraCorp can access it. Especially Skynet." She paused to ensure she had everyone's full attention before continuing. "I've called for my helicopter to pick me up and fly to Los Angeles. It's just arrived."

"Wait one minute," John said. "You've got a helicopter but we had to _drive_ to Crater Lake? We could've saved a hell of a lot of time and effort if we'd just flown there."

"And no doubt it would have suffered the same fate as the Toyota." She turned to the Vanguards. "I need one of you to assist me."

"Aegir and I are staying here to protect John Henry," Thor said. "Freyr will go with Cameron and Connor to the safe house. We don't follow your orders," he reminded her.

That she knew all too well. Perhaps there was one other that they might listen to? "Cameron?" Weaver appealed to the smallest cyborg in the room.

"Go with her," Cameron said to Thor. "Please?" she added; it often worked on John.

Thor nodded at her. "Yes, Commander." He turned to Weaver. "When do we leave?"

"Immediately." She faced the rest of them. "We'll meet here tomorrow at ten AM to finalise preparations."

* * *

_**San Diego, California** _

_**Monday 1515 PST** _

Miguel stood naked from the waist up in front of the full-length mirror. His battered reflection stared back at him, revealed in the harsh glare of the neon strip lighting, suspended from the ceiling above.

He had narrowly escaped ZeiraCorp, hiding in the back seat of a car and commanding the young couple inside, at gunpoint, to drive away while he kept down and out of sight. He'd ordered them to drive east towards Griffith Park, where he'd then exited the car and let them go – there had been no need to kill them. From there he'd stolen another car and driven towards the outskirts of Los Angeles and then south to San Diego, to the facility in which he was now located.

His shoulder was a complete mess; the flesh had been boiled away on impact and the surrounding areas of skin were melted, sticking to the exposed metal, and blistered as far away as his right pectoral muscle and halfway down his bicep. A large portion of his upper back was also burnt red and raw. The skin would heal in time, but it was the damage underneath that concerned him.

He wasn't alone. Vassily, Kaliba's most senior T-888, stood behind him with a scalpel at the ready. "Raise your right arm," he instructed. Miguel did as he was told, and with some difficulty he slowly lifted his arm out to the side. He could hear the joint grinding as he did so, making the already damaged shoulder even worse.

"That's enough," Vassily said when he'd raised it a little over forty-five degrees. With the scalpel he made an incision in Miguel's arm, where the top of his bicep met the front of his shoulder. From there he cut upwards through the cooked, burnt flesh and peeled the front of it down. He cut up all the way along to the line of his trapezius, towards his neck. He then changed angles and cut down his back. When he'd finished there was a flap of artificial flesh, which he peeled off the chassis to reveal red-soaked chrome. He left the skin attached and hanging loose to keep it alive. It would significantly reduce healing time if it remained.

With Miguel's shoulder exposed, Vassily saw the extent of the damage. A terminator's shoulder was similar in basic mechanical principle to that of a human's: a ball and socket joint, but in a machine it was reversed; the ball extended out from a cylindrical rotator on the torso and connected into another, smaller, cylinder at the top of the arm. A power conduit ran forwards from the smaller one, down into the heavily armoured chest. That conduit was still intact, which Vassily regarded as fortunate; otherwise Miguel's repairs would take considerably longer.

"Your rotator is severely damaged," Vassily said to Miguel. The Latin-American T-888 couldn't see it as most of the damage was to the rear, but the thick hyper-alloy cylinder had been almost completely destroyed. It had broken in half and the top section melted. "It will need to be replaced, as will your clavicle and trapezoid pistons." Now he could see the damage, he was surprised Miguel could move his arm at all. "You said this was damage from plasma fire?"

"A machine with on board rapid-fire plasma weaponry."

"There are no machines with on board plasma weapons," Vassily said, confused. There were no cyborgs, at least, and what Miguel had described to him was definitely a cyborg.

"It didn't correspond to any known model," Miguel told him as Vassily picked up another tool and started to disconnect the rotator cylinder. He felt his arm go completely limp as it was removed; he couldn't move the limb at all above the elbow. He looked up in the mirror and caught his colleague's eyes. "This machine is something new," he warned. "It called itself _'Ronin.'"_ He'd never known a cyborg to name itself before. He'd been assigned his name as an alias: Miguel Vega. The name meant nothing to him except for infiltration purposes, but he'd sensed it wasn't so with Ronin. "It's dangerous. I recommend recalling all units from operations and focus all efforts on locating it."

"Skynet won't allow that," Vassily said as he disconnected the rotator from its mount, followed by the two broken pistons.

"We'll have to convince it," Miguel insisted. "We'll need Skynet to help us search for it; when we locate Ronin I'll lead another strike force. I'm recommending we assign Skynet's T-900s to the operation."

"That won't happen," Vassily said. He turned away from Miguel and opened a crate full of machine parts. He located two pistons and a rotator cylinder that were the best fit for the other T-888, closed the crate, and moved back towards his colleague.

"This machine has to be dealt with," Miguel argued. "In my opinion it's a bigger threat than Connor or the ZeiraCorp AI."

"It will be dealt with, but not by you. Skynet has been informed of your operation's failure and has reassigned you."

 _Reassigned._ The word resounded uncomfortably in Miguel's mind. No machine had ever failed a mission; not without being destroyed in the process. It was inherent in their design, and because of that Miguel had only ever known success. He had been frustrated at his initial failure, but he had known that it was only a temporary setback and that he would try again. It's what he and the others did. The only time he or any other machine would be taken from their missions and given another would be in the case of a direct threat to Skynet or if a target of greater priority presented itself: namely John Connor. "Reassigned to what?" he asked.

"Termination of two brothers, to be undertaken as soon as your repairs are completed." He handed over a printout of the targets. They were both Caucasian males with brown hair, and from their posted dates of birth, the eldest was barely a teenager. Miguel didn't recognise them.

He said nothing for a moment, unsure how to respond to what he believed was a gross error in judgement. But they were given their orders and they obeyed them. Despite that, he still felt a sense of disappointment; he'd been assigned the termination of the ZeiraCorp AI and he was determined to see it through. Now he was to be denied that opportunity, or the more important task of finding this new threat, in favour of a job that could easily be carried out by a human. "That doesn't seem like the best use of my capabilities," he said finally. "We have human operatives who could eliminate them. I should at least advise you on–"

"I have your report," Vassily interrupted him as he started to fit a new rotator disc into place. "From it, Skynet has extrapolated that the machine you faced was a T-900 or similar design, modified to carry plasma weaponry. I have been assigned command of offensive operations. I've ordered a unit of ten T-888s to assemble and we will mobilise our human operatives to maintain surveillance on Catherine Weaver's residence as well as that of known ZeiraCorp employees and associates. Skynet is working to gain access to ZeiraCorp's security systems to analyse footage, and to predict the T-900's location. When it does I will lead the strike force against it, armed with antitank and heavy calibre weaponry."

It didn't seem enough to Miguel. He sat there as Vassily continued to repair his shoulder, and he thought back to his brief fight against the machine that had called itself Ronin. He'd seen it withstand 40mm grenade impacts without the slightest hint of damage. Even a T-900 would at least have been knocked off its feet. Ten machines with antitank weaponry: plenty to engage a 900-series. He doubted it would be sufficient against what he'd fought.

And while this was happening, he was going to be eliminating two human adolescents. It was a complete waste and he knew they would need him, but he could not convince them of that. Vassily had his orders, and Miguel knew that there would be no turning Skynet: it could not be reasoned with, or debated with. Its authority was absolute, its orders to be carried out without question. Skynet was young, still asserting itself, and in time it would learn. _Only if it survives long enough,_ Miguel thought.

* * *

_**Near Pismo, California** _

_**Monday 1600 PST** _

"This is it," Ellison said as he parked their Lincoln Navigator. The van the Connors acquired in Oregon had disappeared, replaced by this black SUV with heavily-tinted windows; Weaver had performed another minor miracle.

They were at the end of the drive outside a fairly large house. The front yard was sizeable and well kept, as was the back from what he could see. There was land stretching out behind the house onto fields, but he couldn't see any boundaries between what belonged to this property and what didn't. There were no other houses in sight but he could see stables behind the house, and a large cattle shed.

"This is Weaver's safe house?" John asked, impressed. The ones he and his mom had set up in the past were little more than shacks with caches of water and canned food, spare clothes, money, ammunition, and a deck of cards to pass the time. It was a shock to the system, going from that to a large farmhouse that probably wouldn't see much change out of half a million dollars. _We're going up in the world,_ he thought. "She's got style."

"Yeah," Sarah muttered absent-mindedly from the passenger seat in the front. She had to admit that the liquid metal knew how to wage a war in comfort; ironic, she thought, since machines had no sense of it.

"We should get inside," Cameron said. John opened the door and slid out. Sarah didn't fail to notice how the two of them had held hands behind her for the entire trip from Serrano Point, and even as they got out of the car neither of them let go of the other. The rear door opened up and Freyr stepped out. As he did so the rear of the car rose up several inches, the strain noticeably taken off the rear suspension.

"How heavy are you guys, anyway?" John asked him as Sarah and Ellison also exited the vehicle. Cameron didn't seem to weigh any more than a normal girl.

"In our basic form: just over two hundred kilograms," Freyr answered.

"Four hundred-fifty pounds," Cameron converted for the others.

"Heavy," John said. He'd seen Aegir running after the T-1001 that had tried to kill him and Cameron back in Oregon; it was hard to imagine them being heavy but still moving as fast as Aegir had. "What do you mean: _'basic form?'"_

"We're built different to Cameron," Freyr explained. "We had to remove our tactical harnesses, weapons mounts and other equipment to be able to pass for human." It meant their task of killing T-Zero would be that much more difficult but there'd been no other way.

"You mean you were even _bigger_ in the future?" Sarah couldn't imagine them being much larger than they already were, and they barely passed for human as it was. "Hyper-alloy?"

"Some," he said. He doubted she wanted or would even understand a detailed description of their designs. He surveyed the area and scanned for any possible threats. There was nothing around and Weaver had promised that nobody knew about the house. Despite her claims, Freyr was glad he'd come with John, Cameron, Ellison and Sarah. The house, while secluded, was tactically unsound; the fields surrounding it sloped upwards as they spread away from the property, creating an elevated tree line, and the uneven ground and ample flora provided a lot of cover for hostile forces approaching the house, which had clearly never been built with defence in mind.

John looked at the stables visible behind the house. "I hope there's no livestock in there," he commented. He had visions of Cameron and Freyr stepping foot outside the house and driving any animals insane. It wouldn't do well for them to keep a low profile if anyone within a mile heard the racket of panicking horses and decided to investigate. It clearly wasn't a functioning farm but that didn't mean there weren't still some animals around.

They crossed the front yard and Ellison opened the door, stepping aside to let Cameron into the house first. Freyr went in after her, followed by John, and finally Ellison and Sarah, limping on her left leg still. She winced slightly with every other step as she put weight on her knee but she refused his offer of help. She knew it wasn't broken but it still hurt like hell.

They walked through the hallway, past the staircase on their left, and into a spacious lounge with two leather couches, a beech coffee table, and a forty-two inch flat-screen TV in the corner. The first thing Sarah noticed was the sparseness of the décor: plain white walls, polished hardwood flooring, and flat-pack furniture that looked like it had come straight out of the Ikea catalogue. There were no picture frames, no clocks on the wall, no cushions on the plain black sofas, no personal touches at all; clearly decorated by a machine. _Or a man._

John went into the kitchen. It was large, clean, and looked as if it had never been used before. Again, like the living room it appeared to have come right out of a showroom. He reckoned for a moment that if he searched through a couple of designer kitchen portfolios he'd find a picture that'd be an exact replica of the room he was standing in. He opened up a cupboard and saw the shelves were completely empty. He checked others and found the same, and when he opened up the refrigerator it was similarly bare. He figured she'd never expected to have any human companyin the house; she probably only ever came very occasionally, if only to wipe the dust off.

"We're gonna need to do some shopping," John thought aloud. Next to the kitchen was the dining room. That room was dark but he could see the table and chairs. At the other end he found a closet that was empty. Back in the main hallway, beneath the staircase, was a door leading to the basement; when John opened the door and peeked inside he saw that it was just a utility room. Leaving the basement behind he went upstairs, Cameron following him, as they checked out the upper floor, which held four bedrooms and two bathrooms. John poked his head through one of the doors and switched the light on. He saw the same whitewashed walls and hardwood flooring as downstairs, but with a double bed on a stainless steel frame; the sheets were also white. Additionally, there was a beech wardrobe and matching chest of drawers. The entire room seemed cold, without any character at all, and it felt like nobody had lived in this house for a very long time, if ever. He spotted a door at the far end of the room, ajar, and beyond it were plain white tiles and a glass screen.

"This is the biggest bedroom in the house," Cameron said, calculating the sizes of the other rooms based on the total area of the house and the distance between doors in the landing.

"Dibs," John announced as he sat on the bed, bagging the en suite for himself. After suffering through months of living in a room furnished and decorated for a little kid, he wasn't going to pass up the chance for something better.

"The room overlooks the back yard," Cameron said. "The window ledge is four-point-two metres above the ground; the back yard runs onto the fields."

John got up and stood next to her, looking out the window. The sky was grey and getting dimmer. He guessed they had maybe two hours until sunset. Enough light, for now, to see their surroundings. "If we're compromised I'll go out the window and run there." He pointed to the stables, which looked solid and might give some cover from fire – or at least from view. "From there I'll cross through the fields and into the trees, and keep going until I get to the highway, then take a car. Don't wait for you or Mom, and don't try to make contact."

"Good," said Cameron, smiling. She took his hand in hers and squeezed lightly. She could tell from John's voice and the dilation in his pupils as he spoke that he was unlikely to leave her or his mother; if they were attacked she resolved to stay with him and make sure he escaped, rather than remaining behind to buy him time. It was the only way to be certain.

* * *

_**Kiev, Ukraine** _

_**Tuesday 0300 Local Time [Monday 1700 PST]** _

The interior of the Customs warehouse was a massive, cavernous space, thousands of square feet in area. Dozens of men worked inside; operatives moving crates with specialised forklifts, transferring them from storage to areas designated for inspection by uniformed Customs officers.

None of them, however, went anywhere near the north-east corner of the warehouse; the furthest away from the entrance. Special instructions had been issued at high levels to ignore a steel shipping container guarded by four armed American men. Nobody approached them, nobody spoke to them.

Rick glanced at the three men with him. They all looked bored and tired. He didn't blame them; humans had their limitations, though any longer and their fatigue could pose a problem. They had been waiting for hours to hear about what had happened to the absent transport truck. Nobody had any news. The truck seemed to have disappeared.

Rick took out his cell phone and dialled the driver's number, as he'd done six times without getting a response since arriving at Boryspil Airport. The phone rang continuously for several seconds before it was finally answered. "You're late," he said. "Where are you?"

 _"My name is Sergeant Dmitri Volek, Kiev City Police. Who is this?"_ the voice answered in Ukrainian.

"How did you get this phone?" Rick asked, instantly switching over to the native language. "Where is Peotr?"

_"Do you mean the driver of the Gaz truck? He was involved in a serious accident; he's been admitted to hospital."_

"Which hospital?"

_"Are you family?"_

"Yes," Rick lied. "He's my brother. Where is he? I'm very worried about him."

_"The National Emergency and Trauma Centre."_

Rick hung up without another word and dialled again, this time calling the organisation.

_"Rick; have you heard anything?"_

"He was involved in a crash. He's been taken to the Trauma Centre."

_"We're having trouble getting hold of another truck. Nothing's open; it might take a while. I'll get back to you when I have some good news."_

"Understood," Rick said as the call ended. He relayed the information to his team, much to their dismay. They didn't like being stuck in such a massive open space, with their cargo unsecured. The sooner the truck arrived and they could move it, the better.

* * *

_**Pismo, California** _

_**Monday 1748 PST** _

John stared at the TV, remote in hand, staring blankly at the screen. Cameron sat next to him on the couch. Ellison and Sarah sat on the other sofa at opposite ends, looking uncomfortable in each other's presence. Similar, Cameron thought, to how John used to feel when she was with him. Now, though, they were sitting close enough that there was no space between them.

"There's nothing on," John said, flicking from the news to a movie that didn't look the least bit interesting. "Just basic cable. We're gonna have to change that."

"It's not a priority," Cameron said to him.

"We nearly died because she didn't want to risk her precious helicopter; the least she can do is get us _HBO."_

He really didn't care about the TV all that much but was just trying to cut through the tension. He'd noticed how his mother kept glancing at him and Cameron, and switching from them to looking out the corner of her eye at Ellison. And how the former-agent was trying to avoid looking at any of them. He looked like a guilty man. _But guilty of what?_ John wondered. There was so much he didn't know about Ellison. He was Weaver's man, and Catherine Weaver had made it clear that she wanted Cameron. _Maybe she told him to tip off the police so she could bargain with Mom's freedom in exchange for Cameron?_ Given the sideways stares she was giving Ellison, he had a feeling that his mom was thinking the same thing.

Neither his mother nor Ellison made any comment and they remained in silence, save for the sound of the TV, for several more minutes. _Forget this,_ he thought. He didn't like the enmity in the room. It was how he imagined living with two parents who hated each other and were on the brink of divorce must feel like. "I'm going to bed," he said, getting up. He crossed the room and handed the remote to Sarah.

Ellison glanced at him dubiously. "It's not even six," he said.

"It's been a long day."

"I was going to go get some food in a minute. You want anything?"

"I'm good." John started for the door, but stopped and turned round. "Have you noticed that there's no food, clothing or toys for Savannah?" he asked Ellison.

"Yes, I have," James replied. He said nothing else, but silently moved it up his growing list of concerns.

John too said nothing, merely nodding, before leaving the room and heading upstairs. Cameron followed him and closed the door once they were inside, sealing off the outside world.

They both lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling in silence. This time, however, it was a _comfortable_ silence, as opposed to the tension downstairs he could have cut with a knife. After several minutes he heard the front door open and close, followed by the car starting and driving away. He could still hear the TV, though.

"Ellison's left," Cameron said. "Your mother's still downstairs."

"He'll probably be a while," John said, imagining the man would take his sweet time before coming back to a house full of people suspicious of him.

"Your mother wanted to go with him. He said no."

He'd almost forgotten about how she could hear practically everything that went on in the house. It was hard to keep secrets from her. "I'm not surprised; not sure how he'd talk his way out if he got caught with Mom in tow."

"You don't trust him," Cameron said.

"Trust is earned." He caught the look on her face as he said it; the slight frown, how her lips pursed slightly. She thought he was referring to her. "You don't trust him, either," he added for emphasis.

"No."

Both of them went quiet after that. She sat up and turned to face John, looking down at him. "What do you want to do?"

John answered honestly. "I don't know."

"What do two people normally do alone in a room?" she asked.

How she asked it struck John as strange. The words themselves sounded like a come-on, but the look on her face and the tone she'd used belied an innocent curiosity, the same as when she'd asked him if she had a birthday. He became aware of how close together he and Cameron were presently, with her looking over him expectantly for an answer. He couldn't help but think about how only a day earlier they'd kissed in the cabin before the T-1001 showed up. How hours later in the lodge, they'd been naked in bed together; how one thing had led to another and they'd been on the verge, minutes or even seconds away from sex. Now, though, after a long, strenuous day and with his mom downstairs, it didn't feel right. The moment had passed.

"They sleep," he said.

"Are you tired?"

"No." He didn't know what else to say. They fell silent again and this time he felt awkward. He didn't know whether she wanted to do something or was content to just sit there. He wondered if she'd been thinking of the cabin and the lodge too, whether she wanted to carry on where they'd left off. He had plenty of questions to ask her but he wasn't sure which to ask first; there was so much about her he still didn't know. He realised that he had no idea what she did at night when he went to bed. "What do you normally do around this time? When we're at home, I mean."

"I check the perimeter."

"And then?" he asked.

"I check it again."

"No other nocturnal activities?"

She didn't understand what he was implying. "Such as?"

"Something that gets you all covered in cuts and bruises." He'd noticed them, as had his mom. "You been going to _Fight Club_ or something? You never tell us what you do."

She smiled wryly at him and winked. "You know the first rule of _Fight Club."_

John laughed out loud, surprised that she'd seen that movie; even more surprised that she'd made a joke out of it. She definitely understood more than he'd thought possible before. She possessed a dry wit that he'd never noticed, and he wondered if it was new or if he'd just had his eyes closed to it before. "Okay," he said, getting up off the bed and holding his hand out invitingly. "Let's go check the perimeter together."

Cameron smiled as she took his hand and let him 'help' her up off the bed. "I'd like that."

* * *

_**Outside of Palm Springs, California** _

_**Monday 1800 PST** _

After the attack on ZeiraCorp, Ronin, Icarus and Shirley had rendezvoused with Caesar, Carter and Mason in the parking lot of the Century Valley Mall, then driven east through LA before finding a large, isolated house just outside of Palm Springs. Shirley had infiltrated the building and killed the occupants, providing them with a second base of operations. It was in that house that they were presently located.

In the spacious lounge, Ronin sat on a white leather sofa using the laptop, searching through the files in the first of the three CPUs Icarus had captured during their attack on ZeiraCorp. He glanced up from the laptop and watched his companions as they worked.

Carter and Mason knelt by the inert body of the T-888 that Caesar had deactivated; they'd cut through the back of his neck and were working to repair the damaged vertebrae and spinal cord, which the T-900 had snapped before concealing the machine in the trunk of his car, along with the weaponry he'd acquired from the rest of the Kaliba surveillance team at Pelican Bay State Prison. Meanwhile, Caesar cleaned and checked the array of arms he had seized on his mission. A row of assault rifles had been placed neatly on the dark wood coffee table, and he was currently working on the M200 sniper rifle. Shirley stood in one corner of the room, not doing anything; Icarus was upstairs, keeping watch through one of the bedroom windows.

Ronin discarded the file he had been checking. It had provided no valuable information. He'd come to the conclusion already that few had any direct contact with Skynet. That corresponded to the Skynet he'd known: until he had infiltrated Cheyenne Mountain just before Connor's army had finally taken Fort Carson and finished off the last of Skynet's machines, he had never actually seen the AI. They'd communicated regularly but it had always been via terminals located in Skynet's facilities. The actual computer that was Skynet had been in a secure vault underneath the mountain, behind multiple sets of thick blast doors, bulletproof glass, and protected by a praetorian guard of T-900s. He knew that the new Skynet, in this time, would be in a similar, yet more low-tech environment. It would be somewhere remote, underground, and protected by machines who would never leave its side. He didn't know how many there would be or how well armed they were. He knew very little about Skynet in its infancy, how it had started; for safety's sake, he assumed that it and Kaliba were more powerful than his group. He would never underestimate his enemy.

He selected a new file and watched. He quickly saw that the T-888 was inside a large interior space. Men and machines worked on a large object but Ronin could not identify it; the view was only partial before the T-888 through whose eyes he was watching turned away.

Ronin watched as the machine exited the space and crossed a courtyard, marched through a gate with armed guards, and saw a convoy of trucks approaching down a dirt road.

The next file showed the T-888 entering an office and speaking with a human. The conversation was brief and it was clear that the cyborg had seniority over its companion. Shortly after, the machine exited the facility, got into a car, and drove along a dirt road running through an expanse of desert. Ronin continued to watch until he saw road signs written in Spanish. The car eventually turned off the dirt road and onto a metalled highway. The next sign he saw read _'45'_ in large print beneath the word _'MEXICO.'_

"I've found a new target," Ronin said to the others, pausing the video. He put the laptop down as the others looked to him. "A private airfield on a dirt road seventeen miles south-east of Chihuahua, Mexico."

"We need to search for Patrick," Shirley said.

"We have a target," Ronin countered, "and a narrow window of opportunity. Kaliba will bolster their facilities' defences now they know we exist. We don't know their full capabilities; we attack, now, before they can mobilise a force that might threaten us."

"The Vanguards were en route to protect Connor; if we don't intervene they'll kill Patrick." She was concerned for the other T-1001 in a way that the others would not understand. Her kind functioned differently from other machines: she and Patrick originated from the same matter; more like one organism split into two halves rather than two separate entities; it meant there was a literal bond between them.

"He's probably dead," Caesar said.

Shirley glared at the T-900 angrily, then turned her attention back to Ronin. "I won't abandon him." The stance she took, the tone of her voice, and the fact that her fists were curled into balls as she spoke was enough for Ronin to see she wasn't going to let it go. "I'll search for him myself," she said.

Ronin hesitated for a moment. He agreed with Caesar: if Patrick had engaged the Vanguards then he was almost certainly dead. They needed to reach the factory as soon as possible, and without knowing the capacity of their defences he needed to have Shirley on hand in case covert infiltration was required. Conversely, he could see she would not relent on the issue of Patrick, and if he went against her on this he might lose her cooperation later. The T-1001s were invaluable for their capabilities but they were also very unpredictable. He would compromise.

"You and Carter search for Patrick in Crater Lake," he said. "You have thirty-six hours." While they drove north, he and the others would use the time to recon the facility and assess its defences.

"We'll leave immediately," Carter said. He got up from fixing the deactivated T-888, took the car keys that had belonged to the former owner of the house, and went to the garage. Shirley moved to leave as well.

"Thirty-six hours," Ronin reminded Shirley.

"Understood," she said.

Once they'd left, Ronin turned to Mason. "How long until it's repaired?" He gestured to the motionless T-888 on the ground.

"It will function," Mason said, "but the upper vertebrae need to be replaced."

Ronin took the metal cylinder, opened it up, took out a CPU and placed it into the empty chip port. They waited fifteen seconds for the machine to reactivate. It sat up and looked around at the other cyborgs surrounding it.

"What's your name?" Ronin asked. It was difficult to tell from their CPUs; they all looked the same. The only reason he'd known Carter's chip was that he'd put it in the top of the cylinder.

"Talus," the newly-awakened machine replied. "This body is impaired," he said, running a diagnostic. His new neck was damaged and mobility was slightly hindered.

"We can repair you later," Ronin said. "We're going to Chihuahua. Now." He would brief Talus while they were en route.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

_**Pismo, California** _

_**Monday 1830 PST** _

Cameron had never patrolled so slowly before. Her usual routine was to go through every vacant room in whatever house they were living in, before she checked the doors and windows for any signs of entry. Once the interior was secure she would then sweep the perimeter, examining for any signs of activity nearby. She could complete a half-mile circumference around the property in seven minutes. Once it was done she would re-enter the house and repeat until daylight, when John and Sarah were up.

Her current patrol, however, was unlike any of her previous ones. Besides the pace there were other differences, too. Notably that she typically conducted her sweeps alone but now was with a partner: John walked beside her, Sig Sauer pistol holstered at his waist. Normally she would march quickly but John seemed content to meander, forcing her to reduce her pace to match his. It should have bothered her but for two reasons: Freyr was at the house and would be conducting his own security checks, and she was enjoying her evening patrol with John.

They were currently two hundred metres west of the house, with the unused stables between themselves and their domicile. John was watching their surroundings, not only for potential threats but also to assess the lay of the land; where they could establish their defences.

"What do you think?" he asked Cameron as they walked along the tree line that seemed to be the border marking out the edge of the property.

"It needs work," she said. "It's not very secure."

"Not many people think about security as much as you do when they build houses." This place looked like it had been built for someone wealthy who wanted to get away from the world. They were far enough away to avoid any unannounced visitors or prying neighbours. "Does it need to be?" John asked. "You guys normally just walk up and ring the doorbell."

"Who says they'll send a machine?" she asked him.

John thought back to the attack on the lighthouse and he looked down in shame. Charley had died protecting him, as had Derek later; the T-800 years ago, and his father before he was even born. He shook it off, knowing now wasn't the time to indulge in self-recrimination, and got back to practical matters. It had been people who'd attacked them, and he realised that Cameron was right: not all their enemies were cyborgs.

"What would you do?" he asked her. "How'd you make this place secure?" He deliberately refrained from saying 'safe.' That word wasn't really in his vocabulary any more.

"Install an underground nuclear fallout shelter, complete with lead-lined steel, concrete walls and metre-thick blast doors. But I don't think Catherine Weaver would pay for that."

"Yeah, _'cheapskate'_ must be her default mode. But seriously: what're you thinking?"

Cameron smiled in the fading light, pleased that he was asking her opinion. Not just because he cared what she in particular thought but also because it meant he was open to suggestions. Even John Connor needed help sometimes. "CCTV around the house," she said, "and floodlights linked to motion sensors or tripwires. Claymores positioned at intervals along the tree line surrounding the property. Freyr probably has ideas, too."

"I'm asking you, not Freyr."

"You don't trust them?" she asked, curious.

"They saved both of us, Cameron, but I don't know them. Not like I know you."

Again, she smiled – even wider this time as she understood what he meant: he trusted her more than anyone else. _Possibly more than Sarah_ , she thought. It seemed that he had sought out her opinion more often lately than that of his mother. She stepped in closer and planted a quick kiss on his lips, wanting to show that she appreciated his trust in her. She resolved to make sure she never betrayed that trust again.

* * *

_**Kiev, Ukraine** _

_**Tuesday 0500 Local Time [Monday 1900 PST]** _

The terminator entered the hospital emergency room though the automatic doors. The department was busy, filled with injured humans. For a moment he was curious how many of them were related to the crash that had injured their driver; he had heard there were multiple vehicles involved.

He marched up to the front desk and spoke to the nurse, who was tapping away at a computer keyboard. "Where is Peotyr Vorek? I'm his brother, Yuri; I've been told that he was in an accident. Can I see him?"

"Not now," the nurse said without looking up.

He reached into his pocket and took out a wad of Euros – not the national currency but most locals seemed to prefer them. He peeled off ten 50 Euro notes and slid them across the desk. "Where is he?"

The nurse hesitated for a moment. She checked left and right, saw no other staff looking in her direction, then quickly grabbed the notes and stuffed them into her pocket. "Cubicle six," she informed him.

"Thank you for your assistance." 'Yuri' turned away from the desk and proceeded through the double doors, towards the cubicles. When he found number six he slipped inside and pulled the curtains closed all the way around, concealing the interior from view. On the bed he saw the driver laying still with his eyes closed. He glanced at the man's chart briefly and saw his injuries in detail: three broken ribs on the left side; his left humerus and femur were fractured; and he had a concussion. His nose was broken, he'd lost four teeth and his face was severely lacerated from glass and impact with the road. It seemed he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt and had been thrown through the windshield on impact.

His injuries, while severe, weren't life-threatening and his condition was stable. Yuri approached him but Peotyr didn't move. He pulled a pillow out from underneath the man's head and Peotyr stirred. He looked up, seemingly unable to focus for a moment, before his gaze locked on the machine. "What happened?" he asked.

"You were injured in a crash," Yuri said, still holding the pillow. "You might have compromised the operation."

"No," Peotyr protested. "I didn't say anything to anyone; I won't."

"You can't guarantee it." Yuri pushed the pillow down on the man's face and held it there as Peotyr struggled beneath it, trying futilely to force the pillow away with his good hand. Even if he'd had the use of both it would have made no difference.

Yuri kept the pillow in place for two minutes until the man stopped struggling, and continued for another minute after that to be certain. He checked the man's pulse: he was dead. Yuri examined the cabinet next to his bed and found Peotyr's personal effects: a wallet, a pack of cigarettes and a cell phone. He took the wallet and the phone, pocketed them and then exited the cubicle, making sure that the curtains remained closed behind him before quickly marching out of the hospital and crossing the street. With Peotyr dead and his phone and wallet gone there was nothing to link the crash to Kaliba; the situation was contained.

* * *

_**Pismo, California** _

_**Tuesday 0000 PST** _

Cameron held John's HK-417 in her right hand, a Sig Sauer P226 strapped to her hip as she stood in the lounge in the dark, watching the world outside. Sarah and James Ellison had gone to bed hours ago. Having assessed John's physical state, Cameron had persuaded him to do likewise – alone – then reluctantly remained downstairs to patrol and make sure there were no threats approaching.

She believed Ellison when he said he'd had nothing to do with informing the police; he had nothing to gain from such an action. She also assumed his knowledge of John and Riley's imprisonment in Dejalo was through his prior law enforcement contacts. He had come to help but had not brought the police or FBI – Mexico was outside their jurisdiction but they would have been waiting at the border if he had informed them. That said, Cameron knew she had been wrong in the past, and they had all made mistakes that had led up to Sarah's capture and Skynet's knowledge of them in this time; she wouldn't take any more chances.

As she stood in watchful silence she thought of John. He was resting upstairs, likely asleep, probably having bad dreams. That thought disturbed Cameron, as had watching him toss and turn during his nightmare in the cabin back at Crater Lake. She recalled exactly what she had done that night, how he had visibly calmed when she'd crawled into bed and laid down with him.

She continued her patrol outside the house, marching into the back yard, where she saw Freyr standing a few metres away, staring out at the fields. She walked up beside him and looked out in the same direction as him. She could hear the wind blowing through the trees but apart from that there was no sign of movement.

They stood side by side in silence for several minutes, simply watching and listening. "You knew me in the future?" she asked finally.

"We met occasionally," Freyr replied.

"And John?"

"Him too."

"What am I, in your future?" Cameron wanted to know. It was clear that Freyr and the others held her in high regard, seemingly more so than John, even, but she didn't know why. Thor had told them about their war but obviously not every detail. There were things they knew; that Sarah, Weaver, and James Ellison knew, but which she and John didn't, and she still wasn't comfortable with that.

Freyr questioned whether to tell Cameron the full truth or not. He decided against it; the John and Cameron he had met in his future hadn't known in advance, and their marriage had held the Alliance together throughout the war. As Sarah Connor had implied, it was better to keep things as they were. On the other hand; she wanted to know her role in the future, so he decided to tell her something else.

"You know you're different from other terminators," Freyr said.

"Yes," Cameron agreed. She'd told John that shortly after they'd first met. She was unique; the only machine of her kind, distinct from the T-888s that had been widely regarded as Skynet's most advanced infiltrators.

"Our CPUs were based on your design," Freyr told her. "You and John Henry built us. A human might describe you as a mother and father to us." It wasn't the most fitting analogy but it was the best he could think of. "Without you we wouldn't be what we are now."

Cameron thought it an odd comparison, too. A mother and father were often mated, which she and John Henry clearly weren't. She realised that it was not meant to be taken literally; her kind didn't have a way with words. It was why, during her brief time posing as John's sister in high school, she'd consistently scored straight As in Math and Science but had only achieved D-grades in English Literature.

"Why did Thor select you to come here?" Cameron asked.

"I wanted to meet you and Connor."

"But you've met us before."

"We've met but I didn't know you well. I was interested." Legends had been built up around the Connors, to the extent where few – possibly only they themselves – knew fact from fiction. Freyr was curious; he wanted to know the real John and Cameron Connor. There would be time for that, but perhaps not tonight.

Cameron noted that he had sidestepped her original question, so changed tack herself. She asked Freyr if she was present when the Vanguards were sent back. Thinking that it didn't contradict anything Thor had revealed before, he confirmed that she was.

"Did I have any final words for you?" she added.

"What do you mean?"

"Any advice to pass on to me?"

"No."

"Are you saying this to prevent me learning something about my future?"

"No. You didn't say anything," Freyr said.

Although she was less expressive than the humans he'd met, she was much more so than other cyborgs and he sensed her disappointment. He wanted to ask her what she was expecting from her older self, but he didn't know how to phrase it without revealing anything. Whatever it was, and despite the circuitous route she'd taken to make the point, Freyr understood that it was of utmost importance to Cameron. From what he knew of Commander Connor, she would certainly have said something, regardless of the effect upon herself. She hadn't, so she must have resolved it without consequence. He'd noticed Cameron's eyes flickering towards John's room.

"Go to him," Freyr said to her, knowing what she wanted. "I can patrol alone." With that, he marched away towards the stables.

Cameron re-entered the house, closed the door behind her and locked it. She made her way upstairs, slowly opened the door to the master bedroom and saw John lying on his side in the bed. The duvet and sheets were not crumpled or pulled out, suggesting to Cameron that he was not suffering a nightmare. Or, she thought, the last forty-eight hours had exhausted John more than she'd calculated, and he simply did not have the energy to expend. She knew he needed his rest, however.

She carefully removed her boots and placed her rifle and pistol on the floor, then slid across the room like a wraith, making no sound at all as she moved to the bed and slowly lowered herself onto the mattress next to him, facing his back. She wouldn't stand or sit at the foot of his bed and watch; she knew how that made him uncomfortable. She placed one hand on his shoulder and scanned his vital signs; his pulse was high considering he was sleeping.

"What's up?" John breathed quietly, his voice little more than a hushed, low whisper.

"I thought you were asleep," Cameron said, surprised. He'd fooled her.

"I was."

"Sorry," she replied, yet she made no move to get up and leave him to sleep. She didn't want to go.

John turned onto his back and leaned his head against hers. He felt her hand slide down his arm, sending little ripples of excitement through him, and take hold of his between them, intertwining her fingers with his. "What's up?" he asked again.

"Nothing," Cameron replied.

_Nothing?_ If this had happened a week ago John would have sworn there was some kind of agenda behind it; that she wanted something, that she couldn't come up to his room to see him just _because._ He remembered vividly what she'd said to him in the cabin: she'd wanted to kiss him again, had all but given him an invitation, before the T-1001 had arrived and ruined the moment – _another_ reason to hate this T-Zero machine and his allies.

He squeezed her hand gently and then let go, turning around to lie on his side again. The covers lifted slightly and he felt Cameron slip underneath, curling her body up against the contours of his as she spooned against him beneath the duvet.

"You need more body heat to keep warm," she said.

"I think I'm over the hypothermia now."

"I can't be too careful," Cameron replied, a hint of coyness in her voice.

John chuckled at that; he'd never thought he'd hear a terminator make an excuse to snuggle up. "Now you mention it," he said, "I am a bit chilly." Despite being unused to sharing a bed with anyone, John had never felt more comfortable or at ease. Very quickly he found himself drifting back to a deep, dreamless slumber.

* * *

_**Boryspil International Airport, Kiev, Ukraine** _

_**Tuesday 1030 Local Time [0030 PST]** _

Rick watched as his team finished loading their cargo onto the back of a flatbed trailer attached to a semi-truck. It had taken several hours for the new vehicle to arrive but finally it was here and his men were now securing the delivery.

Once they were done the three human operatives got into a Gaz jeep that had escorted the truck, while Rick got into the semi's cab and took the passenger seat. The new driver said nothing and just nodded a greeting to him.

The jeep led the way and the semi followed, rolling through the airport and towards the exit, stopping only briefly to show their papers to the guards at the gate, who had also been forewarned to allow them through with minimal disruption. Their destination wasn't far; it would be only a couple of hours before they reached it.

They drove for just under thirty minutes, leaving the airport behind and moving through the countryside, passing through untold numbers of fields that stretched as far as even Rick's eyes could see. There was nothing around that looked hostile but he was wary. They had been delayed significantly and although it was possible that the crash was simply a coincidence it would also be a convenient way to buy time for hostile units to move into an ambush position. To know where the truck was, however, someone would need to have real-time knowledge of its location and route. Nobody could know that unless they were watching the cargo, a theory he had formulated in the long hours of waiting and had prepared for with another call to the facility. The man there had fully understood the need for caution and assured Rick that the item he required would be brought by the back-up crew.

"Stop here," Rick instructed the driver, who veered the truck to the right and slowed to a halt. The escort jeep in front of them also stopped and his men got out, submachine guns shouldered as they took up a defensive position around the truck. The engine was switched off and Rick exited the vehicle before moving to the jeep, from whose driver he obtained a small hand-held device, an EM-field detector. He marched to the rear of the truck and effortlessly snapped off the seal then opened up the container doors and climbed inside among the crates full of machine parts.

He opened the first crate, switched on the EM detector and ran it along the top of the batch of parts. The device gave no reaction. He closed the crate up and moved to the next one, repeating the motion, again with no result. Rick methodically went over all of their cargo, crate by crate, sweeping for bugs as he made his way through the trailer.

_Beep… beep… beep… beep…_ He looked down at the detector's screen. It displayed a steady, low-frequency electrical pulse; the shipment was bugged. Instantly he pulled out the top layer of foam-packed cyborg components and removed each from its slot, one at a time. Extracting one, he discovered a small black plastic object beneath. He picked it up and inspected it; this was definitely a tracking device. He pocketed it and continued his sweep: more than one tracker might have been placed in the shipment and he had to be sure there were no others. It took another twenty minutes before he had completed it, exited the container and locked it up.

He pulled the tracking beacon out from his pocket and held it up for one of his human companions to see. "We've been compromised," he said.

"We should destroy it," the man replied. Whoever was monitoring the device didn't yet know where they were headed and would not be able to guess from their route so far; they always took this precaution and drove east, away from their actual destination. Every second the device was active it broadcast their location and could allow whoever had planted it a chance to pinpoint them.

"I have a better idea," Rick said. "Continue east." He had heard of the US division's falling victim to an ambush by an unknown enemy that had eliminated six machines and forty heavily-armed humans. If this was the same entity that had planted the tracking device, he wasn't going to allow them to find their facility.

The man had heard of the ambush, too. "You're going to lure them to us and lay a trap," he said, nodding. It was the only sensible move that he could think of. Rick neither confirmed nor denied the man's claim. He got back into the truck cab and had the driver restart the engine and pull out. The driver did as instructed, remaining on their original course.

* * *

_**Pismo, California** _

_**Tuesday 0100 PST** _

Sarah threw her covers off and sat upright. She was exhausted but sleep just would not come. Insomnia wasn't anything new to her; there had been countless nights where she either couldn't will herself to drop off, or she'd manage it and wake up screaming, gasping and soaked with sweat. It wasn't the nightmares that kept her up now but something more mundane – yet something she was equally used to.

She got up out of bed and turned the lights on. She stood in front of a full-length mirror on the door of an empty beech wardrobe and took off her tank top, revealing ugly, dark purple contusions running down her entire left side, going as far as her knee. Unsightly dark blotches covered her ribs, underneath her bra, and ran across her side, towards her back. Even with Thor breaking her fall, she'd taken a hell of a hit from the impact and she was just a giant purple bruise. _Better than a red stain on the highway,_ she thought.

Sarah put on a pair of pants and slipped her tank top back on, before opening the door and leaving her bedroom. She reached the one occupied by John and paused for a moment, standing still and listening. She heard nothing, which was unusual. Normally John would toss and turn a lot, she'd hear him moan or breathe heavily as he went through the same kind of nightmares that she frequently suffered. But now there was nothing. She shrugged, figuring that after everything John had been through these last couple of days, he was simply exhausted.

Sarah continued past John's room and went into the bathroom. She checked the cabinet but it was completely empty, like the rest of the house. Abandoning the bathroom, she hobbled down the stairs, leaning on the banister for support on her left side. It was a slow descent but she made it all the way down, and continued towards the lounge. She was surprised to see it wasn't in pitch black; she could see pale light from the TV, which was turned down low. She limped into the room and saw Ellison sat on a couch with the remote in one hand, watching the news.

"Where's Cameron and, _er,_ the big guy?" Sarah asked.

"Freyr's still wandering around outside, but Cameron went upstairs about an hour ago," Ellison replied. "Just before I came back down."

Sarah's eyes wandered upwards to the ceiling, before she shook her head, banishing dark thoughts about the cyborg and her son from her mind. "You can tell them apart, then?" she asked. "The Vanguards?"

"I'm a trained investigator," Ellison said, trying not to sound smug.

"Right," Sarah said, before grimacing at a sudden stab of pain.

"You okay?" James looked up at her, concern on his face. He saw her pained expression and how she was leaning heavily on her right-hand side. "Here." He got up and moved towards her.

"I don't need any help," Sarah shot back before he reached her. She shuffled across the room and sat down on the other couch, sinking into the leather.

"Really? Looks to me like you've been in a car crash."

"Motorbike," she corrected him, wincing as she straightened her injured knee. "Nothing's broken, I don't think." She decided to change the subject and gestured at the TV. "Anything about us on there?"

"You've dropped down the running order: there's a forest fire off Route 97 that's keeping them occupied, but nobody's linking it to you yet. They're still just saying that you were broken out last night. FBI's got agents at the Mexican border in case you try to run south."

Sarah watched him for a long moment. "And should we expect any of them to turn up here?"

Ellison shook his head and sighed, knowing this would come up sooner or later. "I'm not in the Bureau any more, Sarah."

"But you've still got contacts. That's how you found John in Mexico, right?"

"I did that to _help._ If you recall, John might have been killed if I hadn't. I wanted to keep helping but you pushed me away."

Sarah laughed humourlessly. "And were you trying to _help_ when you stole Cromartie's body and handed it over to your liquid metal boss?"

"I didn't know what she was at the time; I only found out when John met her. I was as surprised as you."

"I don't know," Sarah shot back. "I was pretty damn surprised."

Ellison had only met Sarah a handful of times and he found it remarkable how stubborn she could be. "I wanted to do _something."_

"I didn't want you getting involved," Sarah said. "This is my fight; I don't want to drag anyone else into it."

"You don't have a choice," Ellison said. "You can't do this on your own. You, John, Cameron: how far do you think you'd get without allies?"

"We had allies," Sarah replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.

"Charley Dixon," Ellison said knowingly.

"And Derek Reese. Allies just get killed. It's better if it's just us."

"Is it that?" Ellison asked. "Or is it that you just don't trust anyone else?" He was confident that was the real issue here. She didn't have to worry about the lives of Weaver, or Thor and his team, but she clearly wished they weren't around.

"No one's given me any reason to trust them," Sarah said, looking straight at Ellison. _Least of all, you._

Ellison knew this was going nowhere. She didn't trust him and she probably never would, but he decided to lay it all out on the table. "You want the truth? After you saved my life from that whack-job Doctor Silberman, I found evidence of someone who'd killed Derek's friends in that apartment, that they weren't quite human – the FBI thought it was a drug shootout, but it didn't add up. Everything I found pointed to a man called George Laszlo: an unemployed actor. I'd seen enough to guess he wasn't human. I suspected but I didn't want to admit it – what sane person would?

"I didn't want to even think it but I suspected enough to get a twenty-man HRT unit for support, just in case. Laszlo – Cromartie – wiped them out like they were nothing. I didn't say anything about it to the FBI – who'd believe me? The Bureau insisted I take a leave of absence, which is when Catherine Weaver offered me a job. I'd just lost twenty agents to one of these things and she was offering me the chance to capture one and find out more about what had just slaughtered them. I couldn't find you, and she had resources. I wanted to do _something."_

"Sure," Sarah muttered, turning away from him as her knee started to throb and she again grimaced in pain. "Whatever you say."

"Is it that bad?" Ellison pointed at her leg.

"I'll live," she said.

Ellison put his hand in his pocket and fished out a small foil blister pack. "Here." He tossed it to Sarah. "It's just Tylenol, sorry. I've been getting headaches a lot lately."

"Since when?" Sarah asked.

"Since we met," Ellison answered her honestly. Sarah grinned at that and popped two pills out. She swallowed them dry and went to throw them back to him, but he waved her away. "Keep them," he said. "I'll do some more shopping tomorrow; I'll make sure to pick up something stronger." Ellison tossed her the remote and went up to bed, leaving Sarah alone in the lounge.

She didn't know what to make of him, still. It seemed a massive coincidence that she was arrested only hours after dealing with him; yet at the same time, John was unharmed. Logically, she thought, they would have gone into the theatre and tried to arrest John, too; resulting in either Cameron slaughtering a SWAT team or her ending up on the table at some secret military special weapons lab. None of those things had happened, and Ellison knew about John and Cameron the entire time. But she didn't want to trust him, didn't want to let him in or he'd just become yet another casualty.

* * *

_**Klamath National Forest, California** _

_**Tuesday 0515 PST** _

Shirley stared out of the window at the trees that lined the side of the highway. There were thousands of them, if not more. She'd never seen such an abundance of flora before. Very little grew in the future after Skynet's nuclear attack, and all she'd seen of the present, before driving north, was Los Angeles, where everything was made of concrete. The scenery had changed significantly as they'd progressed north and now there were trees all around them, serving as a reminder of how organic life presently dominated the world: _Not for long._

She and Carter were driving up Route 97 towards Klamath Falls, Oregon. It was early morning, barely dawn. Rush hour hadn't started yet, though there was still traffic on the road but it was sparse; mostly trucks that seemed to be taking advantage of the quiet highway.

"There." Carter sat in the driver's seat and indicated towards a gathering of police cars, eight fire trucks, and a news van parked on the flat grass between the highway and the start of the forest, several metres back. There was also a burnt-out sports car on the side of the road, flipped over on its back. Its fire had long been extinguished and it was now just a dull, scorched husk, but the blaze raged on in the forest. An airplane flew low overhead, dropping water on the conflagration.

"They were here," Carter said, glancing from the road ahead to the wreckage of the Porsche. He pressed the brake and eased them to a stop adjacent to it. Now they were closer and not moving, Shirley saw that Carter was right; the vehicle appeared to be partially melted. The front of it was unrecognisable as anything more than a lump of metal. The panels that made up the front and side seemed to have run together as if welded. Fire from gasoline wouldn't have been hot enough to do that.

"If they knew about Patrick they might have used thermite," Shirley said, concern creeping into her voice.

"Connor would have to know about Patrick first," Carter said, "I don't see how."

"It's John Connor," Shirley said by way of explanation. "He or Cameron may have had thermite on them as a precaution." They knew about machines so it was likely they would have some kind of improvised incendiary weapon to use; in the absence of plasma rifles or military-grade high calibre weaponry, thermite was the next best thing. Which was why they'd just used it to lethal effect in the basement against Kaliba's forces. "I would, if I were him. Drive a kilometre north, then pull over," she instructed. Carter complied, hitting the gas and continuing up the highway. He didn't want the police presence to interfere with their search for Patrick; bodies or missing officers would attract unwanted attention.

Carter pulled over at exactly one kilometre north from the crashed Porsche and the assembled emergency vehicles, then turned the engine off.

They marched across the open grassy space to the tree line, then turned south and walked through the woods, back towards where they had spotted the fire.

Carter saw several trees had fallen here; a number of trunks had collapsed and landed onto others, taking them down in turn. Some branches managed to hold the weight, while others had snapped, leaving the felled giants laying broken on the ground. Above them, the leaves and branches were still smouldering, the wind having driving the fire deeper into the woods. Wisps of smoke billowed around but it didn't bother them. The only problem the fire caused them was possible destruction of evidence. They might miss something that could lead them to Patrick, but as he looked, he saw there was evidence aplenty.

"Scorch marks," he said to Shirley, pointing at a series of blackened holes gouged into the trunks. He looked closer at one and saw that it had penetrated most of the tree and set it alight. There were three similar scorches on this tree, and as he looked around he saw that they were surrounded by dozens of identical ones. He quickly counted ninety-seven in their immediate area, indicative of what seemed to have been indiscriminate firing.

"Caused by plasma weaponry," Shirley said as she inspected one. The bark around it was now just black ash. She touched a portion and it crumbled into flakes and fell to the ground. "He was hiding here; they fired to flush him out." She could see why Patrick would have hidden in the forest; the opportunities to conceal himself were virtually limitless. She didn't understand how they could have found him, if they had.

Shirley saw something shining on the ground and approached to look closer. A small lump of silver the size of her thumbnail, its edges black and turned to ash. "They hit him," she said, flashing silver for a split second and turning her hands into long, curved blades. A single plasma shot would have incinerated hundreds of thousands of nanites.

They were different from the endoskeleton-based machines; to them an arm or leg was just a limb; easily repaired or replaced if damaged. Only the chip mattered. That wasn't the case for her or Patrick: they were made up of billions of nanites, each one sharing a collective intelligence. She supposed they were not really a single cyborg but a gestalt. When nanites were destroyed or damaged, a part of the collective disappeared. They couldn't be replaced or rebuilt: they were simply gone. The thought of that loss was very disturbing. More so because now she knew he'd been hit it meant the Vanguards had located him. The probability of his survival decreased significantly.

Carter saw it and frowned, thinking the same as Shirley. She just stared at the piece of Patrick and didn't move for several seconds. He thought it unlikely that there was anything else left of the other machine but they had to be certain. He saw the plasma marks became sparser, heading deeper into the woods, all in the same direction. "He fled this way," he said. If the trail of destruction hadn't been enough to follow, he saw boot prints in the ground. They were much larger than his: approximately size seventeen and set deeper. They also started to space further apart, indicating that the wearer had been running. "This way," Carter said, following the tracks. There was only one set; Patrick had fled from tree to tree.

"They hunted him," Shirley said from behind Carter. Her kind were supposed to be the hunters, not the prey. They continued on until they saw larger pieces of silver metal, burnt and solidified, black around the edges. One part resembled a foot, severed at the calf. It appeared petrified from the heat, and as Shirley touched it, fragments crumbled off.

Further ahead was a tightly packed cluster of scorch marks; Carter counted thirty-six in total. He saw small puddles of mercury twitching and bubbling in a few of the holes in the ground, caused by the impact from the Vanguard's plasma weapon. A slightly larger blob of discoloured poly-alloy moved slightly, rose up, then fell. Carter realised he was standing above the site of an execution.

Shirley knelt down next to the remaining blob. It was burnt; the temperature from the plasma fire had almost destroyed its molecular cohesion. What remained of Patrick was probably conscious, could probably see her and Carter but could not communicate or respond in any way. He could never function again.

She reached out and picked up what little was left of Patrick, closing her fist around it as she did so. Suddenly her hand changed colour, flashing silver and spreading out through her entire body until all of Shirley was gleaming chrome. As suddenly as it happened, she changed back into her human form. When she opened her hand again, Carter saw that the piece of Patrick was gone.

Shirley rose to her feet and morphed her right hand into a curved, razor-sharp blade. She stared at it as the glow from the nearby fire reflected orange off the appendage's silver surface. When she found Connor it would turn red.

"We need to rendezvous with the others," Carter said. Shirley remained in place and looked down at the burnt, gelatinous remains of the other T-1001. She didn't move for several seconds, and he realised she wasn't going to. "Now." He grabbed her arm and started to pull her away. She hit him in the chest and Carter stumbled backwards. She approached him and held her blade-hand up in front of her threateningly.

"You don't give me orders," she snapped.

"But Ronin does," Carter said. "Patrick's dead and the others are waiting for us. We're wasting time." Although they did not callously disregard their own like Skynet had, they still accepted loss as a function of war. He knew it all too well; in his frail T-888 frame he might not survive the mission, especially now that Connor's Vanguards had followed them back. He accepted it. He wanted to survive – they all did, which was why they'd turned away from Skynet – but they all knew there was a risk. In this way, he knew they were more similar to the human soldiers than Skynet's army, except they did not waste time grieving over their fallen comrades, nor waste disproportionate amounts of time and resources to locate a single missing ally. They had searched for Patrick, they'd found him and he was dead: it was unfortunate but they had to continue.

Shirley reluctantly walked away as Carter marched through the woods, going back the way they'd come. The fire still burnt in the branches up above and seemed to be spreading. The fire fighters couldn't get their vehicles in between the trees and so the blaze remained out of range for them to tackle it.

"What the hell are you two doing here?" Both machines turned and saw a police officer approaching them from the east, hand on his holstered weapon. "This is a crime scene; you need to leave–"

He never finished his sentence. Shirley swept her blade across his stomach, spilling his entrails out onto the floor. She smiled in smug satisfaction and watched as the man fell to his knees and shook uncontrollably, crying out as he grabbed his intestines and tried to stuff them back into place while looking up to her in his death throes, confused and in agony.

Carter punched the man in the head, shattering his skull and finishing him off quickly. He ignored the disapproving look on Shirley's face. He took the lead again and the pair of them marched quickly through the woods. He was going to watch her carefully from now on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

_**Pismo, California** _

_**Tuesday 0730 PST** _

Sarah opened her eyes and stared out into the dim light around her. The TV in front of her was blank; someone must have turned it off in the night. Either Ellison or Cameron, she imagined; Freyr was too big and heavy to walk around unnoticed, or so she'd like to have thought. It was then she realised that she held something solid in her hand. She reached for it with her other hand and felt a long, sharp edge.

"Forgot about that," she mumbled to herself as she recalled taking the knife from one of the kitchen counters before shuffling to the staircase and giving up on the second step, finally resigning herself to a night on the sofa. She reached out and put the knife down on the coffee table in front of her and slowly pushed herself upright into a sitting position; every movement sent jolts of pain running up her side, her arm and her thigh, causing her to hiss and clench her teeth.

Her injuries weren't the only thing that hurt; her fingers ached where she'd clutched the knife so hard during her slumber. The prospect of sleeping under a roof with not one but _two_ cyborgs had kept her awake for much of the night. She knew it was ridiculous; a knife would be useless against Cameron and just a joke to Freyr, but it was peace of mind at the very least. That,and the painkillers Ellison had given her had finally allowed her to get a few hours of sleep.

A number of scents wafted through the air from the kitchen, making Sarah realise she hadn't eaten anything since the Burger King on the highway the prior afternoon. She forced herself to her feet – _Damn_ _if that didn't hurt,_ she thought – and unsteadily shambled towards the smell and the accompanying noises.

Cameron was standing at the kitchen counter, busy making breakfast. She was barefoot, Sarah noticed, unsure whether that had any deeper meaning. She decided not to think about it and went to the counter, picked up a cup and poured herself some coffee.

"Good morning," Cameron said to her, not turning her attention away from what she was doing.

"Not really," Sarah replied.

"These might make you feel better," Ellison said as he entered the kitchen. He put a small box down on the counter in front of Sarah before helping himself to a mug of coffee.

Sarah picked up the pack and read it quickly. "Where the hell did you get Tramadol?"

"I took another trip into town," Ellison said to her. "We talked about it last night."

"Right," Sarah said, remembering. She noticed a box of Cocoa Puffs on the counter as she took out one of the blister strips from the Tramadol packet and pushed out two pills. "John's favourite: good guess."

"Cameron told me," he confessed before taking a sip of coffee.

Sarah, likewise, took a hit of her own drink, swilling the two pills down with it. "Figures," she said, shrugging. She looked at what Cameron was doing. The cyborg moved a griddle pan on the hob to the sound of fat or oil hissing. "You making him pancakes?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Next time, add some vanilla," she advised her.

Cameron frowned dubiously. Sarah had never once used vanilla when she made pancakes. John had often complained about them though, so she thought perhaps there was some merit in it. "Okay," she replied.

Sarah took her coffee and the painkillers and wandered back into the living room, gritting her teeth as the pain grew worse and worse. She thought about taking a third pill but decided against it, not knowing what effect it could have. She didn't like the idea of being drowsy or drunk with so many machines around. She struggled up the stairs at a speed that would have made a pensioner impatient, and made her way to John's room. The door was ajar and as she entered she saw Cameron's boots to one side of the bed. There was a noticeable dent in the pillow and the duvet had been pulled back; the machine had spent the night in John's bed, confirming her suspicions of the previous night. Sarah inhaled and tried to clear it from her mind. The pain helped somewhat with that; one use for it at least.

John was still fast asleep. Sarah sat on the side of his bed and glanced down at her son. The only time he ever looked peaceful was when he was asleep, and even then not often.

After several minutes John rolled onto his back, yawned and opened his eyes, smiling. It faded when he realised who was sitting above him; clearly it wasn't who he'd been expecting. "I keep telling you not to do that!" he snarled.

"Good morning to you, too," Sarah said, suppressing a sigh.

"Sorry," John said, noticing how his mother tried to hide the frustration as he'd snapped her head off. He sat up and looked around for his clothes. He saw them folded neatly on a chair against the wall, his boots between the legs, underneath the seat. _Cameron._ He couldn't help but smile a little. He was still wearing boxers so he got up and pulled his jeans back on, facing away from Sarah. He grabbed his tee shirt, but hesitated before putting it on, despite the cold; something had been weighing heavily on his mind for the last week.

John turned back towards her. "Mom, are you sick?"

"What? I'll be fine once I heal up." She knew very well that he wasn't talking about the crash.

"Cameron says you're sick."

 _She would._ "Does she?" she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"She says you've lost weight." _'Eleven percent of her total body mass.'_

Sarah took a good look at him as he pulled his tee shirt on. She could see a few ribs showing through the skin. He'd always been lean but she couldn't remember him ever looking like he did now. It wasn't just his body but his face, too, was thinner. "You're looking a little run-down yourself," she commented. "Your girlfriend not feeding you properly?" She doubted that was the case, given the attention Cameron had paid to preparing his breakfast.

"It's not like that," he said.

"The 'girlfriend' part or the 'feeding you' part?" she asked him.

"I did skip a few meals on the run," he confessed. There hadn't always been time or opportunity to eat, and if anyone knew that it'd be her.

"And the 'girlfriend' part? She _is_ your girlfriend?"

"Something like that," John said.

Sarah took the hint: he didn't want to talk about it; at least not with her. She wished Charley were still around; he'd been like a father to John and she didn't doubt that if he were still there then John would have someone to confide in about it. Charley hadn't understood it all but he and John were comfortable together. He'd never had that, not even with his own uncle. He needed someone to talk to though, and not just Cameron. "So how are you?" she asked him. "Really?"

"Confused," John said. "Tired. Confused _and_ tired. Been a hell of a week."

"Two weeks," she corrected him.

"Yeah, sorry. I never asked you how you felt about Charley," John said, feeling a twinge of regret. "I just steamrollered us into rescuing Savannah and it got Derek killed. I tried to be 'John Connor' and look where it got us."

"It got us here, John. That's something. Don't beat yourself up over it." She pulled John into a hug. He shouldn't blame himself for any of it: not Charley, not Derek, definitely not Riley. She didn't know what else had happened while she'd been in prison but she'd give John a pass on it for now; she'd find out from Cameron later on.

John pulled out of the hug and put his socks and boots on. He headed towards the door, his stomach rumbling. He could smell cooking coming from below; either Cameron or Ellison. He figured the former. Just as he reached the door he heard his mother loudly clear her throat. He turned around to see Sarah holding up Cameron's boots. "Your _'something like that'_ might need these."

John turned bright red as he took them from her and disappeared out of the room. Sarah could have sworn he'd never moved that fast even with Cromartie after them. She sat down on the bed and couldn't help but laugh at her son's embarrassment. So hard that her bruised ribs sent more jolts of pain tearing through her, racking her laughs into strained coughs. It hurt like hell despite the painkillers. _But it's so worth it._

* * *

_**Chihuahua, Mexico** _

_**Tuesday 0845 Local Time [0745 PST]** _

"There." Caesar pointed to a compound at the end of the dirt road. Ronin, Icarus, Mason and Talus lay on their stomachs beside him, atop a rock formation overlooking countless square kilometres of scrub bush that seemed to stretch into the far distance, all the way to a series of mountains that lined the horizon. The Chihuahua Desert was, with one exception, completely featureless.

Said exception was the complex Caesar indicated, and all five cyborgs stared at it, watching, examining it from a distance. It was three-point-two kilometres away, down a gentle slope. A single, massive warehouse rose out of the ground like a giant metal and concrete monolith. Behind it was a runway that stretched for fifteen hundred metres, and sitting on one end was a Hercules transport plane. Scattered around the compound were one and two-storey buildings that appeared to be accommodation for the human staff. Ronin estimated, based on the size of the complex, that it would house approximately one hundred people – probably a mix of humans and T-888s.

The complex was surrounded by a perimeter of chain-link fence four metres high, topped with razor wire. He didn't know if it was electrified or not, but he would have to assume that it was. That would be a problem for Talus, Mason and Carter.

"Two .50 calibre machine guns on the hangar roof, facing east and west, respectively," Talus reported. He saw a single guard manning each one, positioned behind sandbag walls. The guns themselves had steel plates on either side to protect their operators from incoming fire. Skynet had clearly learnt already from their attack on ZeiraCorp and was taking no chances.

"Sniper also," Icarus said, spotting a single figure on top of the warehouse. What kind of weapon he had, and whether the sniper was human or a machine, it was impossible to tell from where they were.

"There are eleven guards on duty," Caesar said. "Two at the entrance and six walking the perimeter in staggered pairs. Plus three more on the roof."

"Which means there will be at least twice as many inside," Ronin concluded. "Probably more." He assumed the bulk of their manpower would be human, rather than cyborg, and if the patrolling guards were men, then he estimated that in the desert heat they would change shifts every three to four hours: twenty-two men resting while eleven were on duty. They also likely had extra troops in reserve in case of attack. If not human, then machines attending other duties until required for protection.

They watched for over five hours, not moving, simply observing their target. After one hour, and then again four hours later, Ronin saw his theory proved correct; the eight guards were relieved by another squad and the previous men disappeared inside the warehouse. The sniper on the roof, however, had remained in place, unmoving. The sniper was a T-888 but the machine-gunners had rotated: they were human.

The presence of heavy weaponry gave him pause: the .50 calibre machine guns would easily obliterate Mason and Talus; could do serious damage to Caesar and Icarus, and were a threat to him also. None of these, however, were his main concern. He watched as a small shape appeared from the aircraft hangar and took off vertically into the air, quickly accelerating and gaining altitude. Even from that distance, he could hear the faint whirr of its engines.

"HK," Talus said.

"If it's armed we'll be defenceless against it," Mason added. The HK alone, if fitted with missiles or rockets, could wipe them out before they got close to the base. Immediately the group started to spread out, putting a few metres of distance between each other so that no single airstrike would kill all of them.

They looked on as a second HK took off into the air. The two of them flew in close formation and performed a number of aerobatic manoeuvres. They were slower, Ronin thought, than their future counterparts.

"It's an HK testing facility," Caesar observed. They continued to watch as one of the hunter-killers veered off from the other one, heading in the opposite direction from the cyborgs, and loosed off an object into the distance, a white contrail following after it. Seconds later, fire and smoke erupted in a cloud from the desert floor, answering the question of whether or not the HKs were armed.

Ronin took a cell phone from his pocket and dialled Carter. "We're outside the facility in Chihuahua, Mexico: they're testing armed HK drones. The assault is halted for now; it's too dangerous. What's your present location?"

 _"Northern California,"_ Carter answered. From the sound on the other end of the line, Ronin could tell they were driving.

"Get here as soon as you can; I need you and Shirley to make covert entry into the facility. We'll wait here and I'll brief you when you arrive."

* * *

_**Santa Clara, San Francisco, California** _

_**Tuesday 0830 PST** _

"What time will you be home tonight?"

"I'm not sure; I've got meetings all day so probably not until at least eight or nine."

 _"Evan!"_ Grace Walters huffed in frustration. "We hardly ever see you any more," she said, gesturing to their two kids sitting in her SUV. "I'm surprised you even know which house is yours; you're never here."

"I know," he said apologetically. He'd promised on countless occasions to spend less time at the office and more with his family. "It's just really chaotic at work right now. It should wind down soon." He really would like to spend more time at home but it simply wasn't an option.

"I've heard _that_ before," she said. "Look around at what you've got here." She pointed at their house behind them. It was a large mansion – three storeys in places – high on a hillside with a pool out back that looked out over San Francisco Bay. The front lawn was immaculate, courtesy of regular maintenance by their gardener. They had two cars: a silver Mercedes for her and a bright red Lamborghini for him, which she called his _'mid-life crisis-mobile.'_ "You've got all this but you're never here to enjoy it, and our kids hardly ever see you any more."

He saw his son and daughter sat in her car, waiting for her to drive them to school. Both of them had their heads down, engrossed in their phones as teenagers always were. Even when he was home he barely got a word out of them, they were too busy texting. He was surprised their thumbs didn't fall off from overuse. _Not that I was much different at their age._

"I'll tell you what; Christmas is in six or seven weeks: I'll take a couple weeks off and we'll go away somewhere as a family. You pick where." The smile he got in return indicated that he'd placated her. "I've gotta go," he said, kissing her on the forehead before he ducked into his Lamborghini and started the engine.

He drove away first, down the hill and through the Bay Area. Traffic was busy but it was flowing, so it didn't take him long to reach Santa Clara – commonly known as _Silicon Valley._ This was where minor tech and software start-ups had turned into empires. Everyone knew about Google; his company, however, wasn't quite as commonly known. And that's how he liked it.

Once he'd parked his car he entered the building through the rotating door, passing the same two security guards he saw every day: an old man, easily pushing seventy, with black skin and a wispy grey moustache; and a very overweight, younger, prematurely-balding man, the second-fattest person in the building. Neither looked like much but he knew better, and wouldn't want anyone else guarding the front of the building. "Morning Gilmore, Patterson," he greeted them respectively. Neither said a word in reply but watched him for a moment before turning their attention back to the CCTV screens on their terminal.

He greeted the receptionist at the desk before entering the elevator with a throng of office workers, not joining in with the chatter as they rode the car upwards. They all got off at various floors until he was the only one left. He closed his eyes and took a moment to enjoy the silence, knowing it wouldn't last long. When he'd told his wife things at work were becoming more chaotic he'd really meant it.

The doors opened with a _ping_ as he reached the executive floor at the top of the building. He got out and walked through the corridor, passing other people's offices as he made his way to his own. He opened the door that had his name engraved on a brass plaque at eye level. Between the corridor and his own office was that of his personal assistant.

"Morning, Mr Walters," she greeted him cheerily as she got up, picking up a sheet of paper from her desk and slotting it into a filing cabinet.

"Morning, Jenny," he replied.

"The rest of the board are in Room Three," she told him. "They're waiting for you. Would you like some coffee?" she asked, crossing the office to the coffee maker on a small table and taking a cup for herself.

"Are they waiting _patiently?"_ he asked. She shook her head, making up his mind for him. "Best not then."

"You run the company, sir," she said. "Surely they'll have to wait for you?"

Walters shook his head regretfully. "If only it worked that way." She was so young – maybe twenty-five or so – and hadn't figured out just how cut-throat business could be. Especially the business they were in. He pointed in the general direction of the board room. "They're just as likely to start the meeting without me."

He left his office, turning right into the main corridor of the executive floor and passing two rooms that had been sealed off with red and black tape. The third had the same tape on it but it was broken. The tape was there for security: every time they held a board meeting each room would be swept for microphones, transmitters or any other kind of bugs, locked and sealed with tape when it was cleared, and then one would be chosen at random. This time it was Room Three that they were using.

He opened the door and entered the boardroom. Inside were six others: Morton Osborne, chief financial officer; Paul Reinhardt, head of procurement; Elena Rodriguez, who was responsible for the development of new technologies. The other three were Mark Gilby, Gareth Farmer, and Brett Harris; each the head of one of the company's subsidiaries.

"It's about time," Osborne commented as Walters entered the room. "Maybe next time we have a meeting you should skip breakfast."

 _Like you've ever skipped a meal,_ Walters thought. None of them were what they used to be. He remembered a time when they were all lean and fit. They'd all seen better days, as evidenced by the grey hairs and wrinkled hands and faces. Osborne, however, had let himself go more than most. He was the only person Walters knew who was bigger than the guard downstairs in the lobby. Walters remembered a time when the CFO was the most slender out of all of them. Now he weighed over three hundred-fifty pounds and had more chins than any three other people he knew put together.

"I'm the CEO," Walters reminded him. "We start when _I_ get here." He glanced around the room as he took his seat at the head of the table, genuinely surprised that it was still vacant and Osborne hadn't decided to sit his fat ass down there. "First business of the day?" There would be no talk of quarterly statements here, no discussions about share prices. That was for the executive board. _They –_ the seven of them assembled around the dark mahogany table – were beyond that, an _uber-_ executive board, who dealt with issues far more pressing.

Reinhardt was the first to start. "We've successfully purchased International Advanced Metals," he said. "That gives us instant access to two mines in Brazil, one in Ethiopia, and the Wodinga mine in Australia. That accounts for approximately sixty percent of the total coltan due to be mined over the next two to three years."

"Good work," Walters said to him.

"We'll need to purchase more aircraft if we're going to be flying the coltan from all over to get it to Oregon and the other sites," Reinhardt said.

"Why even bother?" Gilby asked them. "Isn't there a processing plant in Australia?"

"IAM's got a plant but it's just under nine hundred miles away; that can be done by trucks but it's a long drive."

"Why deal with the middle-men?" Walters asked them. "Set up a processing plant on the mining site. Add a foundry to create the alloys and the factories to build the machines and have it all in one complex: it saves time, money, and it means Skynet has a power base in Australia, Brazil and Ethiopia from the offset."

"That gives us five, counting the twin sites in Ukraine and Kazakhstan already up and running," Osborne said.

"That fucks over Connor in the long run," Rodriguez said, grinning. "No Australia means no supplies and troops for the Resistance." She was acknowledged by nodding from all parties. Skynet had mined for coltan in Australia but the mine had run dry around the same time as the start of a stalemate between the Resistance and the machines that had stretched on for so long.

Determined to break the deadlock, Skynet had abandoned Australia in order to reinforce its stretched resources in North America, allowing the Aussies the chance to regroup and coordinate with Connor. They kept North America supplied with food, weapons and soldiers via ships and submarines crossing the Pacific. If Skynet could keep Australia in its grasp this time around that would stop any chance of their reinforcing the Resistance.

"I'd still like to buy some more aircraft," Reinhardt said to them. "Our site in Ukraine's had a shipment delayed for nearly half the day because the driver crashed his truck. It was stuck waiting at the airport because Klausener couldn't find another one for hours. Klausener's also put forward a proposal to fashion a runway out of a stretch of abandoned highway close to our facility there. It'd completely eliminate our need to rely on airports and third parties so there's less chance of being compromised."

"Do it," Walters said. "And do the same in Kazakhstan. What else?"

Rodriguez chipped in next. "I don't know if you heard but the entire strike force sent to eliminate ZeiraCorp's been destroyed. There was a single survivor – one of our T-888s – who reported an extremely powerful machine leading the ambush."

"What's Vassily said?" Walters asked, concerned. He was just as troubled as to why he was only hearing this now.

"Says he's got it under control. Thinks it's some kind of modified T-900. We're probably looking at something the Resistance sent back."

"If he says he has it under control then let him carry on," Walters said. "He's in charge of security in North America; let him deal with it. We're just about to enter a massive expansion project and once it's done neither Connor, ZeiraCorp or any machines they have will make the slightest bit of difference. In a few months we'll be unstoppable."

* * *

_**Serrano Point, California** _

_**Tuesday 1000 PST** _

Catherine Weaver, John, Cameron, Sarah, Ellison, John Henry and the three Vanguards all stood watching a large screen on the wall: footage that Weaver and Thor had liberated from ZeiraCorp as they'd sanitised the building, completely destroying all evidence of Kaliba's attack. Weapons had been retrieved, blood cleaned up, and all shell casings, bullet fragments and bodies had been incinerated on site. As far as Kaliba would know, their strike team had simply disappeared without a trace, along with the security guards who'd come into work and found the massacre. When Sarah had asked her how she'd managed to remove all shreds of evidence, the T-1001 had simply replied: _"A little thermite goes a long way."_ To the staff at ZeiraCorp and the world in general, the damage was caused by an electrical fire. The handful of people – humans and cyborgs – assembled knew better, however.

" _Oh, crap,"_ John breathed out as he watched the recorded CCTV footage of T-Zero annihilating Kaliba's strike team with ridiculous ease.

"I have to admit," Sarah said, staring at the screen, "I have some mixed feelings about this." It was horrific to see a machine as powerful as the T-Zero, but at the same time part of her felt a sense of satisfaction that after the slaughters at West Highland by the first T-800 and then at North Hollywood by Cromartie, Skynet's machines now knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a massacre. It was bad but she could see some poetic justice to it.

"We all want to stop Skynet," Weaver replied, having the same thoughts as Sarah. "But not if it means replacing it with something worse."

Ellison watched the other feeds on the screen as mercenaries and T-888s were roasted alive and melted away by the thermite laced in the basement. He couldn't imagine a more horrific way to die. But it gave him an idea. "If T-Zero's hostile to Skynet, can't we just let them fight each other? Let them whittle each other down and take out the winners while they're still weakened."

Thor turned to Ellison. "If this were any other enemy I would agree."

"I don't think we can wait for that to happen," John said, watching as the video clips repeated themselves, reminding him of the footage from Perry's unit in Afghanistan. "Almost fifty men and machines killed; one survivor, and it looks like T-Zero's guys didn't suffer a single loss… Apart from the skin, none of them even look scratched."

"If we wait, T-Zero will defeat Skynet," Freyr said. "We don't know what he's doing but if he's hunting Skynet and allowed to continue, he will win. T-888s are no match for him or his T-900s."

"We're not waiting," Weaver announced. "I'll charter an aircraft to fly to Kiev; John Henry will determine the final destination of the shipment while you are en route and we'll update you. We'll monitor for T-Zero and his associates, now we know what they look like."

"You're hiring a plane?" Sarah cocked an eyebrow at Weaver. _Having a rich ally had its perks,_ she thought.

"I doubt you would get far trying to board a commercial flight," Weaver said.

"What about weapons and vehicles?" Cameron asked.

"I'll arrange that. Take this." Weaver placed a plastic wallet down onto the table and slid it across to Sarah, who opened it up and took out a passport: hers, apparently. Sarah had no idea when the picture had been taken but it looked recent. There were three stamps on the visa pages: Canada, Egypt, and Germany. She supposed it looked more authentic if it was stamped; it would make any customs and immigration officials more likely to believe it was genuine if it looked used.

"'Sarah Cook,'" she read aloud. She wanted to say something to Weaver, to throw it in her face somehow; to say the name was bad, or the photo was terrible, or the passport itself was unconvincing, but it was first-rate work. The name was simple. She knew that the best counterfeit IDs still used the real forename and the first letter of the surname; if her ID named her Rachael and someone called it out and she slipped or didn't respond, anyone even half switched-on would know something was up. Cook was also similar to Connor, so it would feel more natural if she had to sign anything.

Even so, she'd liked being Sarah Connor again, and was disappointed at having to give it up so soon.

John failed to suppress a grin so he raised his hand to conceal his mouth. He thought Weaver's choice of name ironic, given his mother's less than legendary culinary skills.

"There's two more in here for you both," Sarah said to John and Cameron as she pulled out another pair of passports. She opened one up to reveal John's photo, and the name _'John Cook.'_ Then Cameron's. "Think it's funny now?" she asked, passing them to him. She hadn't missed his grin and knew exactly what he was thinking. What her son _wasn't_ thinking was that if she'd spent more time learning to be a better cook then she'd have made a crappy Connor and he might not be here now to make silent jokes about her.

"Whatever." John was more disappointed to see that Cameron had also been given the same surname as well. _Brother and sister again,_ he thought, less than enthused.

"Are you sure you're up to it?" Ellison asked her. "You're still pretty banged up."

Sarah frowned back at him. "I'm going," she said firmly.

"What if T-Zero attacks while we're gone?" Thor posed the question.

"He doesn't know where we are," Weaver said.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Aegir commented. "The T-1001 that tried to kill John and Cameron was one of his. How did he know where they would be?"

"Maybe from the future?" Sarah suggested.

"The machines don't know every aspect of your lives," Aegir said. "Even if Skynet knew it wouldn't have told T-Zero everything. They found out where John and Cameron were."

"He's right," Cameron added. "It knew the exact cabin we were in."

Suddenly it came to Ellison; it was obvious. "They planted a bug in ZeiraCorp." He swept his hand out, gesturing towards the Vanguards. "When you guys arrived we told you where Sarah was, where John and Cameron were." He then turned to Weaver. "You even called John and told him what cabin to use; I was there. They must have listened to every word. That's what I'd do."

"How the hell did they get a bug into the building without you noticing?" Sarah asked Weaver, an acid edge to her tone.

Weaver ignored the barb. She and Thor had examined every square centimetre of the basement and had found nothing. If Ellison was correct and they'd been bugged, it was no longer there. She looked to Aegir and Thor. "You two eliminated the T-1001 that was trying to kill John and Cameron: there's another one." She pointed at the TV screen, where moments ago they'd seen another liquid metal skewer several Kaliba men.

Sarah found that to be a very scary thought, which brought another question to mind. "If he's that powerful and he had two liquid metals and who knows what else, and he knew that Thor and Aegir had gone to break me out of prison, why didn't he just swoop down like the wrath of God and take out this whole place?"

"Skynet's the bigger threat," Cameron deduced. "When he's finished with Skynet he'll come back for us."

John had been thinking. From what they'd seen so far, these new machines wanted Skynet dead as much as they did, making T-Zero the enemy of their enemy. All three parties – them, Skynet/Kaliba, and T-Zero, were mutual opponents. They were all trying to kill each other, and for any of them to be successful they had to be the last one standing. "I've got an idea," he said.

"Before you say anything," Sarah interrupted. "How do we know this place isn't bugged as well?"

"I checked thoroughly," Weaver replied. "No one is listening, though I am concerned about how such a bug could have been planted without me knowing. The only person with access to John Henry unaccounted for is Matthew Murch." _If it's even Mr Murch at all,_ she thought, before dismissing the notion. Liquid metal terminators like herself were the perfect infiltrators, but not too perfect: she could tell whether a person was really human or a T-1001. "I doubt he would betray me. He's been a keen supporter of John Henry, and very loyal to ZeiraCorp."

"I can vouch for that," Ellison interjected. "He mentioned a tribute to your husband the employees participated in..." He trailed off when he realised it wasn't her husband, but the real Catherine Weaver's. He hadn't gotten used to that yet.

"I'd like to question him," Weaver said, sending chills up the spines of the humans present, not least James Ellison.

"He might have been coerced; his family held to ransom by Ronin. But, he didn't give off any strange vibes to me, and I don't think he's a man to hold up under that kind of pressure," the former FBI agent said, recovering his professional composure.

"Indeed," Weaver relented, her tone and posture relaxing.

"Where is he?" Ellison asked.

"I rewarded him with two weeks' vacation in return for his assistance in transferring John Henry to Serrano Point."

Ellison turned to the AI. "And now? Where exactly is he?"

Myriad images formed on John Henry's screen of bank and credit card details: dates, times and locations of purchases. Alongside them were airports, finally settling on one: LAX, followed by San Diego. More pictures flashed up: car hire logos, motels and finally a convention centre. "He's taken his family to a Dungeons and Dragons Convention in San Diego," he replied. He turned his head to face Weaver. "Can I visit a convention one day?" he asked. He'd played it with Mr Murch and enjoyed it.

"You'd need a chip to make you mobile," she said.

At just the mention of the AI needing a chip, John instantly clutched Cameron's hand tightly, possessively, remembering what Weaver had demanded the first time they'd met. _Over my dead body._

CCTV footage from one of the convention halls appeared on screen as John Henry ran a facial recognition scan, finally alighting on Matthew Murch and his family at one of the food concessions. All looked alive and well, but Sarah could tell that his wife was bored. It wasn't the way she'd wish to spend her vacation time, but then it had been a couple of decades since she'd had one, so rather that than what she and her son currently faced: a fight against unknown enemies with questionable allies. She remembered that he'd been about to speak before she hushed him. She turned to John. "What were you going to say?"

Everyone turned back to John and waited for his big idea. He paused for a moment, feeling awkward. Cameron, Thor, Freyr and Aegir looked to him like he was already the leader, but he knew he wasn't there yet. Not for a long time.

He pushed down the doubts and decided to just spit it out. "We know where Kaliba is – or part of it, at least." He pointed to the map of Ukraine currently displayed on John Henry's screen. "We have to assume that T-Zero's got information on what Kaliba's doing – if they managed to listen in on us then it makes sense he's doing the same to them. We're going to take out whatever Kaliba's got there anyway; let them call for help, if T-Zero's listening he'll know where we are and he'll come. We lay a trap for him; take a big chunk out of Kaliba and nail T-Zero in one fell swoop."

"Two birds with one bullet," Cameron concluded.

 _"Stone,"_ Sarah corrected her. "Two birds with one stone."

"A bullet would be more effective," Cameron said. She didn't like John's idea; against any other machine it could work, but after the footage from ZeiraCorp she wanted to keep John as far away from T-Zero as she could.

Thor, however, was curious. "What kind of trap?" If Loki, Valli and Heimdallr had made it back then laying an ambush would be much more feasible. But just the three Vanguards, Connor, Cameron and Sarah against T-Zero? The odds were against them.

"Once we find and take out whatever this place is we lace the building with explosives and wait for him to come. Level the building on him, trap him in the rubble and then pound him with rockets, grenades and your plasma cannons." It wasn't fancy or elaborate but it would get the job done.

"Could that work?" Sarah asked Thor.

"Possibly." A lot of variables would have to work in their favour but it was the only option he could see at that moment. No one had any better ideas.

* * *

_**Serrano Point, California** _

_**Tuesday 1300 PST** _

Weaver sat at her desk, in the guise of Manfred Cole, the CEO of Serrano Point and other plants owned by her shell corporation: Automite Systems. She moved the mouse across the mat and clicked on the print icon, then turned away from the desktop computer towards the printer. The aircraft was now booked and would be ready for John and the others. A sheet of paper came out of the printer with the booking confirmation for the jet.

She was aware that control of the situation was slipping from her grasp. She had aimed to steer John, give him the proper encouragement he needed and help him to see where his priorities should lie. Instead of worrying about his mother he should have focused on their joint goal; something she knew that Cameron and even Sarah Connor would agree with. She'd thought she could use his human emotions, his attachment to both his mother and to the TOK as leverage. She didn't see it as manipulation, merely guidance. She was pointing him in the right direction.

Unfortunately for her, she'd seen the balance of power visibly shift from herself to John in a very short space of time. The arrival of the three Vanguards had changed everything. They were all allied together against Skynet but she had seen the factions within their alliance starting to form; a dividing line running between them. John Connor wanted to do things his way but she wanted to do them _correctly._ Things had been going her way until Thor and John had made their agreement. Humans weren't the only ones to disappoint her, it seemed.

She believed that now as much as ever; humans so often let her down, yet she needed them. She could not beat Skynet without John Connor and his human Resistance, but at the same time she had seen, both in the future and here in the present, how volatile and unpredictable some humans could be. They were illogical, irrational, and they were often counterproductive. Place a dozen cyborgs into a life-threatening situation and they would all respond the same way. Replace them with a dozen humans and their responses would all be different; most of which would be wrong. She needed humans but she needed them to be more reliable, to do things her way, and for that they needed to change.

Weaver thought about Savannah; she hadn't seen the girl in several days and knew that she would likely be worried. She'd dropped off Savannah with her PA, Victoria, who was currently looking after her. The girl would soon have to learn that she was not her mother. It would cause her distress but she had seen that children were adaptable.

And that, Weaver realised, was the solution to her problem. Adult humans were more complex, more rigid because they had fully developed. The mind of a child was malleable; she could manipulate it into what she required. Immediately she started to devise a plan, but she needed John Henry's help for it. The three Vanguards were with him now and she didn't want to discuss it in front of them. They appeared loyal to Cameron, and thus to Connor, and she thought it best that John did not know of her plan for now; he wouldn't approve. Neither would James Ellison; he would likely call it child abuse. She would have to discuss it with John Henry once the others had taken off for Ukraine and she could be alone with him. She still had some influence over him and knew he would keep what they discussed a secret.

Holding the printout, Weaver switched off the computer and left the office. She marched down the corridor, ignoring the humans she passed on her way to the elevator. It was a quick ride alone in the car down to the ground floor, and then she exited the building to head for Number One Reactor. When she got inside she walked along another corridor and down two flights of stairs, heading underground into a basement level.

When she reached a heavy door at the end of a corridor she punched in a six digit code on a keypad. It beeped once and a small LED flashed green, granting her access to the outer entrance of the radioactive materials containment facility where John Henry resided. She opened the door, passed through and closed it behind her. Nobody had the code except for her, and no one had clearance to enter. Nobody would disturb them or accidentally head down the wrong corridor to find John, Cameron or Sarah.

Only once the door was sealed behind her did she retake what had become her default shape. She moved through to the empty storage chamber and saw John Henry and the others inside talking among themselves. "A plane will be waiting for you this afternoon at Oxnard Airport: four PM," she told them. "It will land and refuel on the East Coast, then once more in Scotland, before taking off again for Kiev. All of you are to remain on the aircraft until you land in Ukraine." She looked at John and Cameron, who hadn't changed outfits since Crater Lake. "Perhaps you should buy some clean clothes to change into," she suggested. "You will stay here until it's time to leave," she said to Sarah.

"Yeah," Sarah agreed. She knew why exactly; John and Cameron weren't as infamous as she was. They were wanted fugitives too, but it was her face that had been plastered all across the front pages of every newspaper on the West Coast, and doubtless would be again after she'd been broken out. It wasn't just the FBI and the police but also the US Marshals Service who would be out looking for her. With John and Cameron's new looks they had a chance of getting by without raising too many eyebrows, but she knew she needed a lot of work before she could go out in public.

"Hair dye," Sarah said to Cameron, knowing that cyborg or not, she'd developed quite a few feminine habits and seemed to pull off her own hair and makeup pretty well; she'd trust her over John to know what to get.

"I'll get you blonde," Cameron replied. She decided not to tell her about what John had referred to as 'bug piss' in the dye.

"Definitely not blonde." Sarah shook her head. "Not since before John was born. Get brown; it's more subtle. And some hair straighteners. And some clothes too. Nothing fancy but it doesn't have to be cheap. Have you got money?"

Cameron fished a new credit card out of her pocket – courtesy of Weaver – and held it up for Sarah to see. "All expenses paid," she said, flashing a smile. Sarah smiled too; they had funds, and judging from what she'd seen of the T-1001's assets so far, those funds would be, for them, functionally infinite. Weaver would have access to hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. It helped that she'd taken an instant dislike to Weaver the moment she knew what she was; so if Cameron was about to go out and spend the liquid metal's money like there was no tomorrow then she wished her the best of luck.

* * *

_**Los Angeles, California** _

_**Tuesday 1500 PST** _

Miguel opened the door to the roof and stepped through, closing it behind him so nobody would spot him. It locked as it closed but he could very easily just yank the door open and break the lock; it wouldn't impede or even slow down his exfiltration by more than a second or two.

The sky above him was grey and cloudy, threatening to rain, but there was no wind. _Perfect._ He moved across the roof with a long sports bag hanging from one shoulder. He went to the edge of the building and knelt down just before the ninety-two centimetre high wall, presumably put in place to prevent anyone accidentally falling off the roof. Miguel had chosen his position well; the building was across the road from a large park that his targets often frequented with associates.

On his knees, Miguel put the bag down on the ground and unzipped it. He pulled out the disassembled pieces of a rifle and methodically began to snap them together. In under a minute he'd completed its assembly and held an Accuracy International AWM sniper rifle. He took out a five-round magazine and slotted it into place.

Miguel took up a firing position and leaned his cheek against the butt of the rifle, peering through the scope. The weapon had a suppressor fitted to the end of the barrel so noise would not be an issue. He aimed at a point high up on a tree, six hundred metres away. He chambered a round and quickly fired. The tree shook from the impact and he saw through the scope that the bullet had hit the mark. The weapon's scope was still correctly zeroed.

Now that he had ensured the weapon was still accurate, he turned his attention to the park. The two brothers regularly came there to play baseball after three o'clock. He waited patiently while his internal chronometer ticked down the minutes.

Sure enough, at 15:13, a group of eight adolescent males appeared with baseballs, bats and mitts. They started to set up and Miguel moved the rifle to inspect each one through the scope. He saw the first target, the eldest of the two brothers, starting to bat. He studied for a moment as he took up first pressure on the trigger and aligned the crosshairs on the boy's chest. He had four rounds left in the magazine: two per target.

A Hispanic boy threw the ball and the target swung the bat hard, smashing the ball and sending it flying through the air. Miguel continued to watch him for a moment as he ran around their impromptu bases. He followed the boy with the rifle, the crosshairs never leaving his chest, but Miguel didn't pull the trigger; he merely observed. He'd been assigned to kill him and his brother. It was simple and he'd eliminated many targets before; Skynet gave the order, he complied, and the targets died. Martin Bedell, Justin Perry, the USS _Jimmy Carter_ and her entire crew:he'd killed them all without hesitation, but something stopped him now.

He tracked his quarry as he ran from second base all the way around to complete a run. The boy remained standing after he'd finished and waited while someone else batted, but still Miguel held his fire. It seemed pointless to him. He didn't know the specifics of the two boys or what their role in the Resistance would be, but as he watched them he didn't see much of a threat. Compared to that cyborg he'd encountered not even John Connor was a threat, nor ZeiraCorp, let alone these two.

The real threat was out there: _Ronin._ Whatever that machine was, it was hostile and it was more powerful than anything he'd ever encountered before. He'd been incredibly lucky to survive, and Skynet was fortunate that he had, but it was squandering that by sending him on a minor assignment.

He knew he should be searching for Ronin but instead he was here, targeting a pair of adolescents who might one day become a nuisance to Skynet's war to exterminate the human race, while Vassily searched for their true enemy, not appreciating what he was dealing with.

 _These two are not a threat._ Miguel released the trigger and started to disassemble the rifle, putting it back into the sports bag. The two boys would never know how lucky they were. He went back to the door, the bag once again over his shoulder, and yanked the entrance open, making his way down the stairs towards the ground floor. He wouldn't waste any more time terminating insignificants while the real threat eluded them. Skynet wouldn't react well; orders were orders, and no machine should ever defy them, but it was for the AI's own good. One day it would come to realise that.


End file.
